Muriel Hockey was a Victoria University graduate, class of 1910. Muriel Hockey had a distinguished career at Victoria College, in her first year she won the Oration Contests, in her final year the Robertson Canadian Constitutional History Prize , and she was awarded the Prince of Wales' Gold Medal on her graduation. Before sailing to West China with the Woman's Missionary Society in the fall of 1913, she qualified as a teacher at the Methodist National Training School (1911- 1912).
Homer Brown graduated from Victoria University with the class of 1906, He earned a Master's degree in Education from Columbia University. And continued his studies by taking a number of divinity courses at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. He was sent to West China in 1912, supported in his Mission by the Missionary Society of Victoria College.
Homer Brown and Muriel Joy Hockey were married in 1915. They had five children: Isabel Joy (b. 1915), Julia Helen Marie (b. 1917), Gwendolyn Maude (b. 1920–d. 1923), Muriel Cecelia (b. 1922), and Homer Grant (b. 1931–d. 1934).
Homer Brown served in the China Labour Corps in World War I as an interpreter. He served as Dean of the Faculty of Education, West China Union University, he supervised the City Church in Chengtu, and was appointed General Secretary to the West China Education Union. Muriel Hockey Brown founded the first Montessori kindergarten in Chengtu, and helped to found the Chengtu Dewey School, where she served as principal, 1921–1924. She taught English to refugees at the University of Nanking in Chengdu. Muriel served on the Boards of the Y.W.C.A. and the Chengdu Deaf, Blind and Dumb School.
Isabel Brown Crook, was born in Chengtu in 1915. She graduated from Victoria College in 1936 and went on to do a Master of Arts degree in Child Psychology and Anthropology at the University of Toronto. She returned to China where she lives and has spent her career teaching at the Beijing Foreign Studies University. She married David Crook. Isabel has served on the Victoria University's Chancellor's Circle. Victoria University awarded an Honourary Doctorate to Isabel Crook in 2008.
Sources:
Chengdu, My Home:the Chinese Feelings Across the Pacific. [Chengdu]:Sichuan Literature & Art Publishing House, 2012
Rose Palmieri. "Canadian Missionaries in West China from the 1880s to 1930s." 2012 (Research for President Gooch).
"Marriages - Brown - Hockey," Acta Victoriana, 39 (1914-15), 296-7
H. Brown,"Letter to The Students, Victoria College." Acta Victoriana, 39 (1914), 177
H. Brown,"Letter to The Students, Victoria College." Acta Victoriana, 39 (1914), 177