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Ma Seung
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Minister, community activist.
Born in a village in the district of Taishan, province of Guangdong, China on 14 July 1872, the fifth son of Ma Zunyan, he migrated to Canada in 1891. Initially he lived in Victoria, British Columbia, working as a domestic servant, and eventually he became one of Canada’s first Chinese presbyterian ministers serving communities in Victoria, Union Mines, Cumberland and finally Manitoba and western provinces from 1917 until 1934 when he retired to Hong Kong with his wife.
Ma Seung, his wife Honglin, and their four children (Peter Ma, Andrew Ma, George Ma, Jacque Ma) migrated to Winnipeg in 1917. Adopted son Henry Ma joined the family in the early 1920s. In Winnipeg, the Ma family they lived at 296 Ellen street, around the corner from the Logan Avenue Chinese Mission. The Ma family boys all received university educations and son Jacque Ma became one of Winnipeg’s earliest Chinese physicians. For 17 years, Ma and his family provided outreach and support to 900 Chinese men and women in Winnipeg and to roughly the same number who lived outside of it in smaller Manitoba towns and cities, and also in northern Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, organizing picnics, socials, teas for the community.
Aside from his duties as Winnipeg’s first Presbyterian minister of Asian ethnicity, Ma was also a talented amateur photographer.
Ma Seung died in Hong Kong in 1951.
Cultivating Connections: The Making of Chinese Prairie Canada by Alison R. Marshall, Vancouver, UBC Press, 2014.
This page was prepared by Alison Marshall.
Page revised: 26 July 2022
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