TONG LOUIE TURNED SMALL FAMILY FIRM INTO A BUSINESS GIANT
Tong Louie isn’t as well-known as B.C. business legends such as Jim Pattison or H.R. MacMillan. But he probably should be — his family company, H.Y. Louie, is one of the great B.C. business success stories.
It was Tong Louie who brought IGA to B.C. in the 1950s. In 1976, he purchased London Drugs, the retail giant. And, he built the H.Y. Louie company from a relatively small family concern into a food distribution giant.
Not bad, considering that his father had to pay a $50 head tax when he came to Canada in 1896.
Hok Yat Louie struggled at first, but by 1903 had started up the grocery distribution business that still bears his name. He already had a wife and two kids in China, but when she remained there to take care of her parents, he took a second wife in Canada, Young Shee, who bore 11 children.
Tong was the second, born on March 1, 1914. The family grew up above the family business at 255 East Georgia in Chinatown, and Tong attended nearby Strathcona School.
In 1934, Hok Yat Louie died during a visit to China, and his eldest sons, Tim and Tong, had to take over the family business. Tong obtained a degree in agriculture from UBC, but never really put it to use, because he went to work for the family, in charge of purchasing and sales.
It was a tough gig, because the city was racially divided in the 1930s.
In his biography, Tong Louie recalled being “read the riot act” when he went through the front door of a café to try to do business.
“(The owner) didn’t want Chinese to parade through his restaurant,” he said. “If I was going to do business with him, I should come in the alley entrance, and that was that. My pride was hurt, but business was business. From then on, I used the alley entrance.”
Tong took over leadership of the company after the Second World War, and it expanded as Vancouver grew. He had a knack for seizing an opportunity, introducing IGA to the province and later buying the local outlets of the Dominion Store chain.
The biggest acquisition was London Drugs, which Sam Bass had founded in 1945 and built into a local empire before he sold it to California’s Daylin Corporation in 1968. Daylin ran into financial difficulties and Tong bought London Drugs for $9 million in 1976.
As the H.Y. Louie company prospered, Tong became one of Vancouver’s most prominent philanthropists.
When he died at 84 in 1998, 2,000 people attended his funeral.