Opinion: Chinese immigrant turned adversity into opportunity with advanced greenhouse operation

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Last month, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland toured Fresh Pal Ltd., a thriving new greenhouse farm in Olds operated by Chinese immigrants. The visit was part of her several-day return to her home province of Alberta, and she was joined by Liberal MP George Chahal (Calgary Skyview) and his brother Raj Chahal.

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Jianyi Dong and his family are the geniuses and main workers of this successful agribusiness. In 2014, Dong emigrated to Alberta after graduating from Peking University, China’s leading institution of higher education. Her original intention was to secure oil and gas employment, but 2014 was a bad year for that. He never found work in the oil zone.

But he didn’t despair either. She turned adversity into opportunity and decided to take bold new directions. With no farming background or experience whatsoever, he threw all caution to the wind and decided to go into greenhouse farming.

It was a long and bitter fight and a steep learning curve for him because he had to master everything from scratch. He read, watched YouTube videos, asked questions, and traveled to China several times to learn more about the state-of-the-art passive greenhouse technology that China is now using to grow massive quantities of greenhouse vegetables.

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He was a determined and quick learner, and by 2019 his farm was a going business. His neighbors and fellow farmers have been friendly and helpful to him, and he and his family are adjusting well to life in rural Alberta. He is now famous on the web in China because of the Chinese vlog that he expertly maintains. In the eyes of millions of Chinese, he is a hero, and I hope he will be in Alberta as well, once his companies become better known.

Today, it has more demand than it can meet, and with the help and collaboration of David Wu, a maintenance expert and energetic entrepreneur, it is expanding its operations. His dream is to spread and commercialize the environmentally friendly and sustainable greenhouse technology he is using. He tells me that growing peaches and oranges in Alberta is entirely possible and on the horizon.

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Freeland was fascinated by all of this and asked Dong a lot of questions about his companies, and he answered them all well. (He was chaperoning as an interpreter, but it turned out my services weren’t needed; Dong speaks very decent English.) His enthusiasm for his farm was obvious and contagious, and he found many aspects of it fascinating and inspiring.

I teach East Asian history at the University of Calgary, but in recent years, as I’ve gotten to know this family, I’ve felt like I’ve been watching living history unfold before my eyes. I consider it a distinct privilege and honor to be a close observer of the tenor and harshness of his daily struggles while profiting from his farm. These people have a kind and polite demeanor and exterior, but inside they are as tough as steel nails. They are resilient, determined and focused. To say that they are ingenious would be more than an understatement: it would be the multiplicative inverse of hyperbole.

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Through the prism of his experience, I feel I have had a glimpse back to the beginning of Old World immigration to this land. Through it, I can see, for example, the wave of Ukrainian and other immigrants (burly peasants in sheepskin coats with robust wives bearing six children each, in Home Secretary Clifford Sifton’s memorable characterization) into Canada. in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. . (Freeland’s ancestors were among them; I know because I asked.) Canada is and always has been a nation of immigrants, and that legacy continues into the rich, peaceful and now permanently multicultural mosaic that is our Canada today. .

Freeland’s visit to Alberta was slightly marred when someone threatened and verbally abused her: Canada’s deputy prime minister! But she was kind and calm afterward, and she pointed out that Albertans are kind and decent people.

And indeed they are, including, of course, the hard-working members of the Dong family. They and hundreds of thousands of other immigrants like them are contributing far more to Alberta’s economic well-being than any boorish troublemaker ever has or ever will.

David Curtis Wright is an associate professor in the history department at the University of Calgary.