About Us
Yee Hong is one of the largest not-for-profit senior care organizations in the country, delivering high-quality, culturally appropriate services to Chinese and other Asian seniors since 1994. Operating 805 long-term care home beds, a wide range of community support services, and a hospice residence, Yee Hong annually serves more than 15,000 individuals across the Greater Toronto Area. Yee Hong also builds seniors organization and system capacity through its advisory services, Private Personal Support Worker Career College, and research.
Our Vision
Seniors living their lives to the fullest, with independence, health and dignity.
Our Mission
Yee Hong offers a full continuum of culturally appropriate services and care for seniors living in any setting to optimize their physical, mental, social and spiritual well-being. We build organization and system capacity for high quality, inclusive, and integrated services and care.
Our Values
WE CARE – By being compassionate and seeking to understand and support each other. By respecting diversity and being inclusive and equitable. By supporting people to be independent and make their own choices.
WE COLLABORATE – By working together to achieve our shared vision and goals. By leveraging our combined strengths to pursue opportunities and address challenges. By partnering to increase our positive impact on our clients, staff and the system.
WE COMMIT – To pursuing excellence through continuous learning, innovation and improvement. To empowering our people to be the best they can be within a progressive organizational culture and work environment. To having integrity and being accountable and to advocating for improved equity and social justice.
Our Story
The Yee Hong Centre for Geriatric Care (formerly the Chinese Community Nursing Home for Greater Toronto), started from humble roots. Our founder Dr. Joseph Wong witnessed how Chinese seniors were experiencing language and cultural barriers in Toronto facilities, and was moved to take action. In 1987, he with a group of 30 Chinese Canadian friends began fundraising to build a nursing home to care for parents and grandparents.
From 1990, the Dragon Ball grew to its main fundraising event. This premier black-tie Chinese fundraiser attracts volunteers, donors, and politicians, including the Prime Minister of Canada.
The Yee Hong Centre was officially opened in October 1994. Yee Hong Centre Scarborough McNicoll K.C. Poon was expanded to 155 beds. Shortly thereafter, the Ministry of Health awarded a total of 715 beds, the largest such allocation to a non-profit organization in the history of Ontario. The Yee Hong Centre Capital Campaign raised funds to build centres in Markham Ho Lai Oi Wan (2002: 200 beds), Mississauga (2003: 200 beds), and Scarborough Finch To Heung Chan (2004; 250 beds).
To date, Yee Hong Centre remains one of the largest not-for-profit nursing homes in the country and includes a full continuum of care community and supportive housing services including Aw Chan Kam Chee Evergreen Manor.
Yee Hong Is Speaking Up and Acting to End Racism
Acts of violence against our communities in the Toronto area and elsewhere are a painful reminder that systemic racism persists in Canada. Anti-Asian racism isn’t new; although Anti-Asian racism has been brought to the forefront during this pandemic, Asians have long experienced and witnessed stigma and discrimination even before Canada became a nation. Whether we were born in or immigrated to Canada from another country, Asians regularly face racism and oppression today.
Yee Hong and our allies are speaking out and taking action to end all forms of systemic oppression against individuals and communities regardless of our ethnicity, gender identity and socio-economic status. At Yee Hong we know that each of us has a role to play. We will educate ourselves to better understand the impact of systemic racism on Asians and other ethnic groups including but not limited to Indigenous, Black, and Islamic communities. We will explore the complex legacy of colonialism in our shared history and what it means for us today and generations to come.
It’s time for us to raise our voices and talk about what racism looks like, how it wounds us deeply, and how it weakens Canadian society. Moving forward requires constructive collective action that includes not only awareness and commitment but also specific policies and practices to prevent oppression in the first place.
Yee Hong was founded on anti-oppression values and principles. Thirty-four years later, Yee Hong continues its advocacy, system capacity-building and care delivery roles with our full continuum of culturally appropriate long-term services and care to empower seniors, caregivers and families to live their lives to the fullest. We invite every Canadian to join us on this ongoing journey.