Ada Ling Fai Con

Ada Con crossed the finish line on March 10, 2024 after battling many life-changing health conditions in the latter part of her life. She leaves behind her mother Lily and her four siblings: Anthony John (Linda), Athena (Keith), Arnold (Shirley), and Aaron (Queenie); plus, eight nephews and nieces: Ryan (Val with Elise and Matthew), Daniel (Adrienne), David (Tina), Aydan, Austin, Naomi (April), Nathalie (Josh with Gwendolyn and Margot), Jordan (Anna).  We will miss her leadership and organizational skills, sense of adventure, generosity, thoughtfulness, and ability to keep everyone connected and feeling loved.    

Ada was born in Vancouver, BC and attended elementary school (Strathcona), high school (Britannia) and university (UBC) in Vancouver. She graduated from UBC with her Masters of Library and Information Science degree in 1975 and soon after started her career with the Fraser Valley Regional Library Systems where she worked from 1975-2013.  Ada had an amazing career focused on helping people; but beyond her many career accolades and achievements was her rich and diverse community of dear friends that she kept over the years.

Ada was a person of action and her ability to get things done was no secret to all her volunteer committees.  Ada was the founding director of the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop, founding member of the LiterASIAN Writers Festival, Executive Board Director and past Secretary of the Board of the Pacific Canada Heritage Centre (PCHC), chartered member of the Asian Literature Reading Circle, and co-founder of the Asian Literature Book Club.  She volunteered and helped curate items for the Chinatown Storytelling Center as well as spent many evenings volunteering at the Firehall Arts Center and was even a thespian! She was a memorable old Chinese grandma in the play “Woman’s Culture”.  Ada’s love of community, culture, literature and the arts is unquestioned and her impact on the Chinese community in Vancouver is hugely significant. 

Beyond service to the community was Ada’s love for her family. Her sense of adventure was contagious and we are blessed with many favorite memories from the many trips we took as a family – two trips to China, cruises to Alaska, Mexico and Dubai, excursions to Mexico and California, just to name a few.

Like her love for family was her love for the Chinese Presbyterian Church (CPC) in Vancouver where she attended as a child and was a long time Sunday school teacher and church volunteer. Her passion for the church led her to receive a grant to spearhead a project that involved uniting the intergenerational and multi-lingual members of the congregation.  Ada also had a strong desire to preserve the 100+ year old history of the church by helping catalogue and digitalize historical photos and documents.

A viewing service with visitations is scheduled for Wednesday March 27th from 7pm-9pm at the Ocean View Funeral Home and Burial Park 4000 Imperial Street, Burnaby, BC in the main chapel.  The celebration of life service will take place on Thursday, March 28th and will begin at 1:00pm in the main chapel.  The family has requested that donations in lieu of flowers be made to the Chinese Presbyterian Church, BC Cancer Foundation, The Cottage Hospice or the Vancouver General Hospital Foundation. 

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. (Revelation 21:4)