Clement Albert BRAGA [1902-1972]

Clement Albert Braga

Born, Macau 23 September 1902; died, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 
7 February 1972, aged 69.

Married: to Muriel Williamson in 1938 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Children: One daughter: Edith Lynne Braga, born 27 July 1946

Lynne Braga wrote fully and frankly about her father’s life in Canada between 1946 and 1972, but she knew little about his earlier years. Accordingly, this account is supplemented by extracts from Stuart’s book, Making Impressions.

Lynne Braga:

I believe that my father’s early years – he was the third boy and fifth child of José and Olive Braga – were reasonably happy. The photos I have of him as a child and young man show him smiling, relaxed and cheerful with the exception of one. He must have been about four years old and he still had long curls – like a girl! I was told that his mother would not cut off those beautiful curls until he was much older.

Clem, as he preferred to be called, was educated, as his brothers were, at St. Joseph’s College in Hong Kong. He was disillusioned with the sternness of some of the teachers there and later in his life he eventually turned from religion as a source of spiritual guidance. What inspired and sustained him was his great love for literature, drama and art; and like many of his family, he was passionate about classical music.

Clem left school at the age of 13 and joined the business world. It seems that the primary purpose was to help the family. He worked at a variety of clerical jobs – print shop, office clerk, and for a while at his father’s printing business. In his early 20s he travelled with two of his brothers to mainland China and later (on a passenger vessel) they worked their way over to Canada.

The ship docked at Vancouver harbour for only one night and the brothers (then members of the Plymouth Brethren) were put in touch with three young ladies from a Baptist group. One of these was my mother, Muriel Williamson, who was 17. The following diary entry suggests that she took to him immediately: “Sept. 25: Meet Miss Meadows and Braga boys at Mrs. Reid’s. Clement easily leads. We all thought so.”

Muriel asked Clement to send her a post card of Hong Kong by night and a friendship began which continued through correspondence for four years. In 1929, Clem returned to Vancouver and asked Muriel to marry him. Unfortunately, he lost an allotment given to him by his father in the great stock market crash of that year. Muriel accepted Clem’s proposal but since she had medical problems, she wished to postpone marriage. Clem returned to Hong Kong and subsequently, Muriel would undergo Xray therapy (a very new treatment at this time) for a deep brain tumor. It was initially successful.
     
Between 1930 and his wedding in 1938, Clem joined the Hong Kong Volunteers. He enjoyed his time in the service since he had always loved the popular military bands, regalia and ceremony. Throughout his life this had inclined him towards a commission and he was very disappointed when he was unable to serve in World War II. He told his daughter Lynne that he worked as a newspaper reporter during the inter-war years and seems to have had a very active social life both in Hong Kong and Macau. He sang in Gilbert and Sullivan productions and attended many musical events.

Clem and Muriel married in Vancouver in 1938, returning to Hong Kong for their honeymoon, then moving to Macau later that year. They were to remain there for eight years as a result of the Second World War. Other members of the family also retreated to Macau where they spent the war years. Both Clem and Muriel became teachers at a local schools. For two years he lived with his brother Jack and his wife Augusta in Macau, and became proficient in Portuguese.
     
English was a much-needed commodity and Clem was extremely proficient, working at the Liceu do Dom-Infante Henrique. Father Manuel Teixeira’s history of the school, Liceu Nacional Infante D. Henrique jubilee de oiro 1894-1944, page 135, mentions him  as ‘Professor contratado de Inglês, 19 September 1938.’ Muriel had been trained as a kindergarten teacher and obtained a position training Chinese girls. Both had private pupils as well. This is an excerpt from a letter Muriel wrote to her relatives:

As soon as summer comes, four or five girls are joining Rosa to make a class. It takes quite a lot of time preparing lessons as I have to learn it all myself first! Clem is doing extraordinarily well at it and it seems to be the general opinion that if you want to be sure of learning English you must have him for your teacher. The new officials and officers coming out from Portugal will wait months to get him rather than take anyone else.

In addition Clem wrote a regular literary column for the Macau Tribune called “From the Bookshelf”, using the pen name ‘Chips’. The couple were fortunate in being invited to stay in the English Consulate during the war and Clem did some work for the Consul, John Reeves. For Muriel, her experience as a bride in Hong Kong was both exciting and wearing. Her health was never perfect and the war years in Macau were especially difficult. Homesick, she left as soon as the war ended, on the first ship out of Hong Kong. Clem was not allowed to accompany her for some official reason. However, he was determined to leave China and begin a new life in Canada. He arrived in Vancouver about six months after Muriel. They now had a daughter, Lynne, three months old.
     
Clem never really adjusted well to his new home. From a busy, vibrant Portuguese colony, full of family and friends, he arrived in Vancouver – then a smoke-obscured rainy port populated mostly by loggers, miners and dock workers. Initially the small family lived in a good neighbourhood with Muriel’s sister and her husband. Not wishing to remain there, they found poor accommodation for the next nine years in various rooming houses and apartments. Clem had difficulty finding work, having no contacts. First, he was hired as a waiter at the fashionable Vancouver Club, then as a salesman at a machine supply store and finally as a traffic manager in a small company called Canada Grain Export. There he worked for very poor wages for the next 15 years, making use of his knowledge of Portuguese (for translation) and his talent for diplomatic correspondence. After nine years in Canada, Clem was able to begin the purchase of a small, rather dilapidated cottage in an affluent area of the city. In what must have been a strange and hostile place, Clem found release in the dramatic arts. He discovered something of a niche in newly forming drama circles in the city, first appearing in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, then acting and producing for the Vancouver Shakespeare Society and finally, forming his own amateur drama troupe, the Harlequin Players. He managed to produce and direct several plays, including ‘A Winter's Tale’ and ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan’.

Clem was a loving husband and father, fond of teaching his daughter French and German (he had taken these up as hobbies) and was particularly given to reading the Romantic poets and Shakespeare. He always retained his affection for music and was a talented writer as well as something of an artist, using this creativity in his dramatic work. Home improvement, though, was not a consideration, and to Muriel’s consternation, he occasionally asserted that he did not like a lawn, that he would be much happier to pave it over with a stone courtyard.
     
Unfortunately, as the little cottage deteriorated over the years, so did Muriel’s health. Then, In 1963, Clem was released from his position at Canada Grain Export after 15 years of service, when the small organization was sold to a larger company. Soon after this happened, Muriel had a serious stroke and was hospitalized for three months. Clem did not give up and after an exhausting employment search, he secured a position at a film processing plant. Following Muriel’s release from hospital, the couple decided to sell their home and travel to England, a dream they had always had. They were able to stay with Noel and Marjory in England and John and Louie in Edinburgh. This was a wonderful time for Clem since he had only had the briefest of visits from some of his brothers, James, Paul and Tony and one sister, Caroline, since leaving China. He obviously missed his family; he often remembered, with great affection, his older brother, Chappie, who died when Clem was 16. He also corresponded with other family members and always thought of them at Christmas. Although James did not live far away from Clem, they did not visit regularly since they did not see eye to eye on religion; but they always had warm regard for each other. After seeing something of Britain and France, Clem and Muriel returned to Canada, settling in Victoria, capital city of British Columbia. Clem had vacationed there a few times and admired the ‘English’ atmosphere of the place. However, Victoria is situated on Vancouver Island, and so they would spend their remaining years separated from their daughter who worked in Vancouver.

About 1969, Clem decided to open a small gift shop which he called “Checkers”. It was not successful. Muriel’s health continued to deteriorate; the stroke had resulted in epilepsy and her mental condition was unreliable. Clem, as always, cared for her with great devotion. Meanwhile, he took on parttime work as a bookkeeper.
     
In the early 70s, Muriel had decided to attend a church, it seems, at the suggestion of James. One Sunday morning, she fell down the church steps and injured her leg. Clem began regular visits to the hospital, and it was on New Year’s Eve, Friday 31 December 1971, while on his way there that he was struck down by a van driven by a celebrating neighbour. He was admitted to emergency, and perhaps fortunately, the lone resident intern was a Chinese doctor from Hong Kong whose English was imperfect. A diagnosis of subdural haematoma was suspected but not confirmed until the following afternoon. As it was New Year’s weekend he was not operated on until Monday, which was too late. He was now comatose. Clem remained in this condition for a month, and Paul left his affairs in Hong Kong and rushed to Victoria. He was tremendously helpful in organizing things for one unfamiliar with British Columbia. With both Clem and Muriel in the hospital, and Muriel’s relatives visiting, there was much confusion. Clem died of complications on February 7th and Muriel, unable to face the future, died three months later in a nursing home.
     
Clem Braga was not materially successful. He earned little and never owned a car. He could be described as a dreamer, even eccentric; but a more sensitive, gentle and kind man would be hard to find. Always thinking of others, (often securing good employment for them) while unable to further himself, he will always be remembered fondly by those who knew him.

     
Extracts from Stuart Braga, Making Impressions:

Clemente Alberto, so baptised, was born on 23 September 1902 in Macau. The family moved to Hong Kong in 1906. Clement, like his brothers, went to the Italian Convent School and then to St Joseph’s College. Like several of them, he joined the Boy Scouts when it was established.

The 1st Hong Kong Scout Troop of St. Joseph’s College was established in 1913 by Major F.J. Bowen, an Army officer who was also a keen Catholic layman.¹ In the next few years until it lapsed during the Great War for want of mature leadership when its senior members were absorbed by the Hong Kong Volunteers, the three eldest Braga boys, Jack, Chappie and Clement all joined it.

After working in his father’s printery for some years, he was by 1924 an assistant in Holyoak, Massey & Co. a trading firm. Percy Holyoak, a leading member of the business community,  represented the General Chamber of Commerce as an unofficial member of the Legislative Council from 1911 to 1926.² A position in his office might have been a significant opportunity, but in the five years he was there, Clement gained no promotion. His name appeared in the Jurors’ Lists until 1930, still as an ‘assistant’ in the same firm. Later moving to China Light and Power Co., , he fell out badly with his supervisor, the Chief Accountant, Mr W.J. Brown, and marched out. He then worked again in his father’s office for a time.

As young men Clement and Noel were very close. Making do with very little money did not trouble them in the least way, and they lived simply. Most of their spare time centred on the Gospel Hall and its activities. There was a group of young people their own age, and they enjoyed each other’s company, both in the Meetings and on social outings. There were usually about 25 people present,³ but on one occasion, Noel was glad to find 49 there.

‘Large party of Gospel Hall-ites spent an enjoyable afternoon on the beach at Cheung Chau, inc. Clement, self, Tony, John and Paul’, wrote Noel in June 1924. Later that year he gave his first address at the Gospel Meeting: ‘What think ye of Christ?’, the  meeting being opened by Clement. Next day, Noel noted that ‘Clement gave a splendid address at the Gospel Hall’.⁴ They were both still enraptured by the experiences of the previous day.

However, they were to drift far apart in the next ten years, Noel remaining loyal to family and faith, while Clement rejected both. Once the scion of the Gospel Hall, he turned decisively and bitterly against it and all that it stood for. When Chappie died in 1917, Clement slipped into a leadership role that the younger boys had come to expect. For some years, he did indeed fill this role, but gradually his brothers, maturing into manhood, grew out of their need for it. Moreover, several of them, especially Noel, Hugh, and later, Paul, appeared to be doing better in life than Clement, Moreover his health was not robust. In 1927, his father told Jack: ‘Clement has gone to hospital again with influenza. He is not a strong boy.’⁵ Over time, Clement gradually slipped in his family’s estimation. This led to a loss of confidence, a loss of heart and a loss of faith. In 1935 things came to a head. Worried letters to Jack from Hong Kong told the story of a troubled, alienated man, in debt to his brothers and to Indian money-lenders, and surrounded by reproachful, judgmental faces, voices and attitudes.

Writing in May 1935, Tony did not mince matters. ‘Maud heard from a friend that he gets drunk quite often and the other night at the Hong Kong Hotel while under the influence he was babbling out all sorts of things about the family in a loud voice for all to hear. Unless he pulls himself together and leaves the bottle alone I’m very much afraid he’ll sink deeper and deeper.’⁶ In July James wrote that ‘Clement has hardly been home for many days ... we can’t do anything for him, as he seems to be very antagonistic towards all the family’.⁷ He was ‘positively aggressive’⁸ to his father, who added, ‘I can’t make head or tail of his behaviour beyond concluding that he is not in his normal senses ... He is so pig-headed as to rush headlong into ruin, absolutely regardless of the consequences.’⁹ By then, any religious affiliation or belief had definitely ceased, to the consternation and grief of his Christian brothers and sisters.

Grasping at straws, Clement had a notion of setting up a fortnightly magazine that he hoped would be a big financial success.¹⁰ Nothing came of it, but this precipitated a resolution of the crisis. The Macau solution seemed to be a good option. At Jack’s suggestion, Clement was persuaded in September 1935 to go to Macau, where Jack took him in and found coaching work for him. Well-established in Macau since 1924 and with a reputation as a fine teacher of English at St Joseph’s College, Jack secured a position for Clement teaching English at the Liceu.¹¹ Jack and Augusta took Clement under their wing in this critical period. As a result, Clement and Jack had a close friendship for more than thirty years.¹² Jack and Augusta provided solid and continuing care and support in this crisis in a way that no other family members could have done. Once he settled into the steady daily routine of school teaching, the constant regimen of lesson preparation and essay marking, and above all marriage in 1938 settled him down.

Gustavo Uriel da Roza, in later life a distinguished Canadian architect and Officer of the Order of Canada, was one of Clement’s pupils and spoke highly of him to Stuart at an Encontro of the Macanese communities, Macau, in 2004. However, his nephew Maurice, much younger, had a different view. ‘I recall Uncle Clement was quite a demanding teacher: he insisted I learn by heart the entire poem “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” – about 490 lines – but made no attempt to explain the meaning of the many obscure words, and he had quite a short temper.’ (Maurice Braga, letter to Stuart Braga, 17 September 2008. Maurice may have been aged 8 or 9 at the time. )

Clement’s wife Muriel went back to Vancouver in December 1945, to be followed by Clement the next year when he eventually secured permission. Clement coped less successfully with the great changes he faced after wartime Macau. He arrived in Vancouver in July 1946. and had difficulty finding work, having no contacts. For most of the next twenty years Clement’s situation was bleak.

Clement’s life in Canada had seen many disappointments, but his last years were marked by a happy re-connection with his brothers, followed by a sad end following a traffic accident. On New Year’s Eve 1971, he was knocked down by a van driven by a celebrating neighbour. He died on 7 February 1972, aged 69.

Edited and illustrated by Stuart Braga, Tuesday 12 April 2022

References:

1. http://www.scout.org.hk/, accessed, 8 May 2011. It grew rapidly to a membership of 100 (St Joseph’s College, Hong Kong: diamond jubilee 1975-1935, p. 134).
2. N. Miners, Hong Kong under imperial rule, 1912-1941, p. 60.
3. Phone call with Marjory Braga, Noel’s wife, 15 December 2001.
4. Noel Braga Diary, 10 January 1926.
5. J.P. Braga to J.M. Braga, 28 September 1927. J.M. Braga Papers MS 4300/2.3/6.
6. A.M. Braga to J.M. Braga, 22 May 1935. J.M. Braga Papers MS 4300/2.3/7.
7. James Braga to J.M. Braga, 30 July 1935, J.M. Braga Papers MS 4300/2.3/4.
8. J.P. Braga to J.M. Braga, 19 July 1935. J.M. Braga Papers MS 4300/2.3 /4.
9. J.P. Braga to J.M. Braga, 24 August 1935. J.M. Braga Papers MS 4300/2.3/8.
10. J.P. Braga to J.M. Braga, 17 July 1935. J.M. Braga Papers MS 4300/2.3/8.
11. J.M. Braga to J.P. Braga, 7 September 1936, J.M. Braga Papers MS 4300/2.3/8.
12. Another factor in Clement’s life assisted him to find his feet again. He had not lost contact with Muriel Williamson, who at 17 had been captivated in Vancouver by the 23-year-old Clement in 1925. In 1929 he returned to Vancouver, and became engaged to Muriel, but they could not afford to marry. Muriel was then dogged by health problems for some years, while Clement was penniless and in debt. In October 1935 Jack suggested that family members in Hong Kong pay Muriel’s fare to Macau so that she and Clement could marry, offering to pay more than anyone else, despite the fact that he had a large family to provide for (J.M. Braga to A.M. Braga, 11 October 1935, J.M. Braga Papers MS 4300/2.3/3. Jack proposed that he would pay $150, Maude $125, Hugh $125 and Tony $100). After all he had done for Clement, Noel was not asked to contribute. Hugh, earning better than most, offered to pay Maude’s share, for she did not earn well, and Clement had contributed to his upkeep at university. However, this plan was not implemented. More than two years later, it seems that Jack paid for Clement to go to Vancouver where he married Muriel in July 1938, then returning to Macau (Clement to ‘home folks’, 29 July 1938, J.M. Braga Papers MS 4300/2.3/2).