Asian Heritage Month: Local businesses thriving across Montreal

Photos of Chien Gourmand. (Chien Gourmand)

It’s Asian Heritage Month.

To celebrate Montrealers with origins from the Far East diaspora, every Saturday in May, CTV News is highlighting individuals who have not only built their lives here but also created thriving local businesses.

Brow & Lashberry

If there’s one thing trending right now, it’s Asian beauty, and Julie Nhan knows all about the ins and outs of the industry.

She opened Brow & Lashberry, an aesthetic care clinic, in 2018, and says it’s the first in Montreal to offer authentic, personalized Korean facials.

“I have always been deeply passionate about art and beauty since my childhood, although I initially pursued a career in health care as a dental hygienist,” she said. “After seven years in the dental field, I realized that I wasn’t fulfilled and decided to follow my true passion for beauty.”

The 32-year-old says the inspiration for her business came after helping her sister and friends with their make-up for an event.

“Their reactions, especially from two of her friends who had little to no eyebrows, made me realize the impact that beauty treatments can have on someone’s self-esteem,” she said.

For three years, Nhan says she balanced her full-time job with building her dream.

“In 2022, I made the tough decision to leave my dental career and focus 100 per cent on my business,” she said. “It was scary, but it was the right move, even though I didn’t know it at the time.”

Through all the trials and tribulations, Nhan says that sense of self-empowerment and confidence has come full circle back to her.

“I’ve learned to navigate challenges with resilience, and I continue to push forward,” she said. “I feel a strong sense of community and pride in serving people who understand and embrace the unique beauty that different cultures bring to the world.”

Chien Gourmand

Brianna Vu says she still remembers the moment she came up with the idea for her company, Chien Gourmand, which provides home-cooked meals for dogs.

“I was sitting in my tax class, and I was really bored,” she laughs. “My dog was still a puppy, and I was thinking, ‘I always eat well at home...why can’t he eat the same thing?”

She took her muses to a neighbour, who had a dog living long beyond its expected lifespan.

“His secret was real food,” she said. “Hamburgers, spaghetti or soup.”

She decided to give it a try, and when she took her recipes to Instagram, says she was overwhelmed by the reaction.

And so, Chien Gourmand was born.

“When you look different, it’s definitely a bonus because there are not a lot of Asians in the dog market, in the dog industry,” Vu said. “People recognize you...people call me by my name, so that’s fun.”

Vu says she hopes her simple story can serve as inspiration to anyone wanting to take the leap into the business world.

“As a first-born of immigrant people, it was really hard for my parents to come here and rebuild everything,” she said. “You can be anything...you can break the cultural standards.”

Polar Bear

Yusam Wong remembers spending most of his childhood trailing after his father, an appliance repairman, taking turns with his brother to hold up a flashlight whenever his dad needed to see behind a corner or into a dark space.

At that time, he says, there was no way he wanted to follow in his ol’ man’s footsteps.

“We hated it, in the beginning, super hated it. We wanted to go outside play with our friend,” he said. “But, you know, as Asian parents, they needed our help and we didn’t have much choice.”

All of a sudden, Wong says the unthinkable happened.

“We started actually liking it, and we actually became good at it,” he said.

In 2002, the Wong brothers founded Polar Bear, an air-conditioning installation and maintenance company that services a wide area of Greater Montreal.

Being Asian in a predominantly Caucasian-Québécois industry was an interesting experience, Wong recalls.

“You would not see immigrants go into any trade, and we were pretty much the early-bird immigrants going in there,” he said. “I was born here, so I had no problem integrating there, but I could feel that there was, even when going to school in these trade schools, you could feel that there’s a big segregation where you’re looked down upon because you’re ‘yellow’ and you don’t belong in this field.”

Wong says that same premature judgment transferred to the field.

“Lots of hurdles to go through, worked 10 times harder than they did in order to get the same results for people to accept us,” he said.

In the end, the hard work paid off, and now with an established business, Wong says his hope is to continue overcoming preconceived prejudices, one air conditioner at a time.