Wah Ching Chau
Section 9, Lot 1293
Pine Hills Cemetery
Wah Ching Chau was born in a village in Northern Guangdong (Kwangtung) province in China in 1939. As a child he was witness to the Japanese invasion of his homeland, famine, and attacks by marauding bandits. To escape the civil war, he and his family fled to Hong Kong in 1949. There Chau studied English and the Chinese classics. He took first-class honours at the University of Hong Kong, and was one of its most distinguished graduates, in 1960. His tutor, and close friend, was British poet Edmund Blunden. Chau won the first Governor’s Scholarship to Oxford in the mid-1960s, and took a B. Litt. at Merton College. After graduating, Chau taught at Wakefield Grammar School, where he produced a record number of A-level English students. He came to Ryerson Polytechnical Institute as professor of English in 1971, and sat on the academics standards council during the years when Ryerson was changing from a diploma- to a degree-granting institution. Just 48 years old, Chau died on September 27, 1987 following a bout with cancer.