Charlie Quon Lee, a spry-looking Surrey centenarian, capped off 2023 by celebrating his 100th birthday on December 29 at a restaurant in Vancouver.
His sage advice for everyone in 2024 is to “keep your nose clean,” and “work hard” and “be kind to people. Most of all, stay young.”
Mr. Lee was born in Vancouver in 1923 and fought in the Second World War.
“He was part of a special program called SOE (Special Operations Executive), borrowed from the Canadian Forces to join the British,” his daughter Ava Lee-Chin explains. “They fought behind enemy lines and a lot of his work was done single-handedly so he would be by himself in the jungles of Burma, doing kind-of special operations stuff, parachuting into the jungle with communications things on his back.”
Charlie Quon Lee still lives in the house he bought in Whalley in 1968.
“It’s a two-level but he doesn’t go to the basement very much.”
He ran a produce stand at Fraser Highway and King George Highway (now Boulevard) near where the King George SkyTrain Station now stands.
Mr. Lee and his wife Lois, 87, have five children and eight grandchildren.