Remembering Gordon Joe: restaurateur, bodybuilder and actor

A Chinese-Canadian restaurant owner is being remembered as a hard worker who also enjoyed performing in the gym and on camera. 

Gordon Joe, who previously owned the Chow Yan Foo restaurant in Sydney, as well as other restaurants in Truro, Amherst, Windsor and New Minas, died on Dec. 19 at 93. 

Linda Joe Sears, his youngest child, said her father only took Monday off work when she was growing up. 

“What I remember most is how hard he worked,” she said.

Linda said he worked at the family restaurant in Antigonish when he arrived in the province in the 1950s. She said he and four business partners eventually opened the original Ho Ho restaurant in Truro and the families lived upstairs. 

“We were very frugal and in my mind we were poor,” she said. 

Linda said hard work paid off and the family purchased a home outside Truro, N.S., in her late teens. 

Leaving China 

Joe followed his father to Canada — his family fled to Hong Kong during the 1949 Chinese communist revolution. 

Robert Joe, Gordon’s son who was still living in Hong Kong in the 1950s, didn’t know his father as a child. He said he saw his father first in a movie. 

“We were in a restaurant in Hong Kong and he was on TV in the movie,” Robert said. “I saw him dancing with the leading lady in this movie.” 

It was one of a few films Joe acted in, according to Robert. His father also had a role as restaurant owner in Margaret’s Museum with Helena Bonham Carter, which was filmed in Cape Breton. 

Robert remembers his father having a passion for martial arts — and he also placed second in the Mr. Eastern Canada bodybuilding competition in 1953. 

“I was kind of actually in fear of him ” said Robert, speaking about the first time he met his father in person around age 8.

Eventually, Robert would work alongside his father and take over ownership of Fletcher’s Restaurant in Truro until selling it about a decade ago.

Linda said her father also learned to sing opera in his later years and travelled with sports teams for exhibition games in China. She said he also became involved in politics while living in Toronto — part of his activism was advocating for an apology for the Chinese head tax which was meant to discourage immigration to Canada. 

Her parents both lived through the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937-45.

“It was always a goal to make it to Canada because it was the good life,” Linda said. 

Linda said her father, and mother, Ying Fu, helped others immigrate to Canada. Ying Fu died in 2022. 

Former staff offer condolences 

The family businesses also provided employment to many Nova Scotians. Many provided condolences online. 

Audrey Thomas worked at Chow Yan Foo for over 13 years — from the time the Joes opened the restaurant in Sydney until they sold it to new owners.

“Anyone they hired, they expected them to work [hard] and we didn’t mind it because they worked so hard themselves,” said Thomas. 

But they stayed in touch through an annual Christmas card exchange. “I’ll miss that,” Thomas said.