THE TWO VICTORIAS
Members will be interested to know that there are a number of similarities
between Victoria here and Hong Kong. Both were established as British Crown
Colonies, i.e, in 1841/42, one as a result of the fur trade by the Hudson’s Bay
Company and the other by the East India Company during the First Opium War.
Hong Kong’s capital is Victoria. The highest peak on the island is Victoria Peak,
a landmark with its funicular railway—- one of the longest in the world. Then
across the harbour, there is Kowloon and the New Territories, leased from China
for 99 years.
There is another connection between the two cities, and that is Liberation Day,
the last Monday in August. It was a day of celebration during British rule before
the Crown Colony reverted to China at midnight on June 30, 1997. The late
Midshipman Phil Bissell, the then young officer on the deck of a Canadian
Destroyer sailing through Lye Yue Mun Channel into Hong Kong Harbour after
the surrender of the Imperial Japanese Forces which had occupied the Colony
since their attack early on December 8, 1941. Phil joined the Oak Bay LBC when
he retired to Victoria. He and his son were known to renew the glaze every April
on all the lockers and benches.
When the Imperial Japanese Forces first attacked Hong Kong, they bombed Kai
Tak Airport and destroyed the local air force and some private planes. And then
launched a ground attack across the border at Lo Wu separating Hong Kong
from Mainland China. There were over 20,000 battle-hardened Japanese troops.
It did not take them long to overcome the meagre Hong Kong defences
provided by the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, the forerunner of the
Royal Hong Kong Regiment (The Volunteers), two British Regiments (the
Middlesex Regiment and the 2nd Royal Scots), two Canadian battalions (the
Royal Rifles of Canada and the Winnipeg Grenadiers), and two Indian Army
Regiments (the 5/7 Rajputs and the 2/14 Punjabis). We shall remember them.
(The writer was born in December 1937 in Hong Kong but spent 9 years in his
ancestral village in the Punjab, some 200 miles northwest of Delhi. He returned
to Hong Kong in 1947 where he went to school, university, and then Cambridge,
U.K. He worked with the Hong Kong Government till he took early retirement on
medical grounds in 1990, and migrated to Victoria the same year. He joined
OBLBC in 2001).
Harnam Grewal
7 November 2024
