David Ho Yu

Painter. Husband of Helen.
Father of Luis, Carlos, Maria and Alicia.

His life

He raised his family in Toronto. Four children: Luis, Carlos, Maria and Alicia. A long marriage to Helen.

He was born in China, and emigrated. Where exactly — the village, the county — the family is still working out, and it is left open here rather than written down wrong.

He painted. The canvas the family speaks of most still hangs in Helen's house — Iguazu Falls, with Helen as a young woman and two of the children standing in front of the water. He painted it from a photograph he had taken himself, and he did not copy it. He moved the falls closer and made them grander than they had ever actually stood, because the photograph had not kept what he remembered feeling there. The original photograph is lost now. The painting is what remains, and it is the better record.

14 September 2026

Helen, at ninety-three, came to see him.

Helen kneeling on the grass beside David's headstone at Pine Hills Cemetery, with a family member crouched beside her. — Kneeling at the stone. Pine Hills Cemetery, Scarborough.

Helen laughing as two family members help her up from the grass beside the headstone. — And laughing, on the way back up.

Where he rests

Cemetery: Pine Hills Cemetery & Funeral Centre
Address: 625 Birchmount Road, Scarborough, ON M1K 1R1
Plot: Section 8, Lot 3315

Map of Pine Hills Cemetery, Scarborough, with a pin marking David Ho Yu's grave at Section 8, Lot 3315, just east of Birchmount Road.

Navigate here Apple Maps Open in GPS app

The pin is the graveside itself, not the cemetery gate — 43.71855, −79.27002. Enter from Birchmount Road; Section 8 is off the loop road on the north side.

Talk with him

This is not David. It is an AI remembrance his family built, speaking from what we know of his life and how he talked. It runs on a machine in the family's own home — nothing you type is sent to an outside company. It will get things wrong. It is here so there is something to say hello to.

David Come, sit. You'll forgive me if the light's no good — I was always chasing it. What would you like to know?

What we remember

Anything left here is kept with the name of the person who left it, and it becomes something he can speak from — he will say who told him. There is no account and no approval step; we are taking it on trust that people are kind. Family can remove a memory, and removing it hides it rather than destroying it, so nothing said about him is ever lost for good.

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Out in the water

He is also out in the Memorial Ocean, swimming with the others who are remembered there — Park, Donna, and the rest.

Find him in the ocean → Opens on him, not on the whole sea.