Early Life
Chong was born as Thomas B. Kin Chong at University Hospital in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. His mother was Lorna Jean (née Gilchrist), a waitress of Scots-Irish and French ancestry, and his father was Stanley Chong, a Chinese truck driver who emigrated to Canada from Guangdong province, China in the 1920s, where he first lived with his aunt in Vancouver. While he was still young, Chong's family moved to Calgary, Alberta to a conservative neighbourhood Chong refers to as the Dog Patch. He says that his father had "been wounded in World War II, and there was a veterans' hospital in Calgary. He bought a five-hundred dollar house in Dog Patch, and raised his family on fifty dollars a week." He later dropped out of Crescent Heights High School in Calgary, Alberta. “I dropped out of Crescent Heights High School when I was 16 but probably just before they were going to throw me out anyway,” Chong laughs as he reminisces about his early years. “I played guitar to make money. I was about 16 when I discovered that music could get you laid, even if you were a scrawny, long-haired, geeky-looking guy like me.”
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