Lily Pui Fung (Chan) Tang

Lily Pui Fung (Chan) Tang passed away the morning of August 2

nd

, 2023 in Calgary, Alberta, a place she has called home for the past 51 years.

Lily was a modern-day pioneer undaunted by the challenges that life presented, who courageously headed into unchartered waters with her husband, Samuel, searching for and successfully building a better life for the next generation(s).

Lily was born in the British colony of Hong Kong in the spring of 1939. She was the eldest of five. She witnessed the atrocities of war through the eyes of a child. Lily thirsted for knowledge and, in her youth, had her sights on higher education as the key to improving her station in life. Her aspirations for a post-secondary degree, however, were unfulfilled due to a number of circumstances beyond her control; but that did not deter her in her quest to open the door for her descendants to realize the dream, which the inequities of life denied her.

Lily met her soulmate and lifelong travel companion, Samuel, in the spring of 1959. Friendship blossomed into casual dating in the summer 1962, which then escalated to courtship in the winter of 1963 eventually leading to their engagement in the fall of 1964. Lily and Samuel tied the knot in fall of 1965.

Their joint investment in the next generation included starting and restarting a new life on two continents in the span of five years, in the countries of France and Canada, both of which could not be more different than Hong Kong. With her own brand of quiet determination and can-do spirit, like a mother bear with a young cub, she found a way through or around every obstacle her family encountered wherever they settled. With her lifelong and eternal partner, they pushed through to their promised land, where her posterity now enjoys the fruits of her and her devoted husband’s decades of perseverance and personal sacrifice.

Lily will be lovingly remembered by her husband, Samuel Tang; her son, Jonathan Tang and his wife, Cathy Yu, and their three sons, Christopher, Preston, and Sean of Menlo Park, California; her younger sisters Patricia Eng of Chicago, Illinois and Aliena Chak of Calgary, Alberta; numerous nieces and nephews; and more family and friends. Lily was predeceased by her parents CHAN, Ping Chuen and LEE, Shui-ai and her younger siblings Heidi So and Danny Chan.

A Memorial Service will be held at the Calgary Alberta Bow River Stake Center of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at 940 Acadia Drive Southeast, Calgary, Alberta on Saturday, August 12, 2023 at 10:00 AM.

Recording of Lily’s Service can be accessed

here

.

View the Service Program