Breathing new life into historic Yuen On Lung store - News Article Locations on Waymarking.com

Yuen On Lung Store

1798 Voght Street

The nearly 100-year-old building’s story begins with the Toy family, which immigrated to Canada from China around 1916. The Toys founded the Yuen On Lung Company shortly thereafter and built their Voght Street department store, which members of the Toy family operated on and off until as late as the early 2000s.

The store sat vacant for a few years in former owner Chung Toy’s estate, and was sold to local mechanic Clint Langill in September 2010.

About a year later, he hired Morgan Hampton to help clean it up.

“[Chung Toy] just kept ordering things and stockpiling things and saving things, and it was literally knee-deep on the floor and the shelves were still full of food and cans and cereal boxes and candy boxes; drinking glasses, mugs, souvenir items, clothing and shoes — we had so many pairs of shoes, hundreds of pairs of shoes,” Hampton said.

The shoes are one of many truly vintage finds in the store. The pair found the shoes in a copy of the 1945 Eaton’s catalogue that had been lying around as well.

Countless original products with Chinese writing on the packaging line the shelves behind the counter.
From the Merritt Herald