The Story of Charles and Toy Chan Kent

Charles Chan Kent was born in Victoria, British Columbia in 1894 and was one of the first of Chinese descent to be born in Canada. He was the eldest of twelve children. When Charles was 25 years old, his father passed away and he was left with the responsibility of looking after his widowed mother, many brothers and sisters, and his own three children.

When Charles was young, he rode his bike around Victoria BC to find work doing alterations and cleaning clothes. Believing making suits was a good way to make money, he served as an apprentice to a tailor and then opened up a small tailor shop in Victoria. Charles provided suits to many customers, some of whom were loggers.  He would walk many miles, sometimes in the dark, to far off lumber camps on Vancouver Island to show them suitcases filled with sample material.

In 1927, Charles moved the family to Vancouver for better business opportunities. There, he rented and operated a small tailor shop with his brother, Ben Chan Kent. A few years later, he moved to a larger location on Water Street, which later became Gastown, and there the first factory was established, producing shirts, pants and overalls. As the years went on, the business expanded and the number of employees grew to over 300. Charles bought more locations, including an entire city block in East Vancouver for the main factory of Aero Garment Ltd. In the 1970s, Aero Garment Ltd. was one of the largest privately owned clothing manufacturing companies in Western Canada.

Charles was very involved with philanthropic work and belonged to the Vancouver Board of Trade and many Chinese benevolent associations. 

Charles and Toy met through an arranged marriage. In 1913, Toy travelled in a ship all the way from China to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada to meet her husband, Charles. Together, they raised fourteen children. On their 50th wedding anniversary, they had a huge celebration with almost a thousand guests. It was here they made the announcement that they would be establishing a charity to provide scholarships to students of Chinese descent. The charity was initially founded as The Charles Chan Kent Golden Wedding Scholarship & Charitable Foundation. In 2020, it was renamed the Chan Kent Foundation.