how my yt settler mama met my Chinese immigrant dad

      there are different versions of how. I remember my dad telling an exciting story of breaking out of Matsqui Penitentiary in B.C.: scaling the chain-link fence and throwing a jacket over the razor wire at the top so he wouldn’t cut himself as he went over it, hiding out through the night in an itchy haystack in a farmer’s field adjacent to the pen, before running to Medicine Hat, Alberta to seek sanctuary with his stepdad, the only grandpa I ever knew. grandpa Tai ran an antique store right across the street from the Canadian Pacific Railway station and lived in the basement. mom says dad and other prisoners were getting day passes to go pick strawberries in the many berry fields now occupying unceded Matsqui Territory in the Fraser Valley and there was a rumour that these work permits that granted little bits of freedom would be stopped so he ran away while on one. but both stories begin with dad leaving the prison when he wasn’t supposed to and end with dad running to Medicine Hat to hide out at grandpa’s. Medicine Hat, where my mom lived her whole life up to that point. they met at a party