Meet Wai Yin, the Founder and Instructor behind Add Oil Cantonese! With a deep love for languages and etymology that started in childhood, she has been helping students learn Cantonese since 2007.
For Wai Yin, learning a language is about more than just vocabulary—it’s a hands-on way to explore new cultures and keep a childlike curiosity about the world alive. As a lifelong learner herself, she speaks professional-level Cantonese, French, English, and Mandarin, as well as conversational Spanish. Outside of teaching, she works as a professional translator and community interpreter for Montreal’s public services. Through this work, she collaborates regularly with speech therapists and special educators, giving her invaluable, on-the-ground insight into how children develop and learn.
She also brings a surprising secret weapon to her classroom: the performing arts. A trained performer who spent over a decade dancing flamenco and other genres of creative dance, Wai Yin channels the energy of the stage into her teaching. Her playful pedagogy is inspired by theatre games and the Total Physical Response (TPR) method, allowing beginners to naturally absorb new vocabulary through active, physical movement.
Having found so much joy in exploring new languages, Wai Yin’s biggest goal is to pass that exact same excitement on to her students.
To learn more about Wai Yin’s professional journey, please click below:
(Apologies for the dated website! Between teaching, interpreting, and performing, polishing my personal page has had to take a back seat. LOL)
Originally from Hong Kong, Jason holds degrees from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of British Columbia. He moved to Montreal in 2023 and is now pursuing a PhD in music theory at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music, where he researches Cantonese popular music (Cantopop). His passion for Cantonese language and culture drives his exploration of how linguistic and musical elements
interact in Cantopop. You can learn more about one of his research projects here:
https://cantopop.humdrum.org/.
In addition to his work as a music scholar and Cantonese teacher, Jason is an active choral singer. He speaks Cantonese, English, and Mandarin fluently, and is currently
working hard on his French to make the most of life in Montreal.
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Eva is a Toronto-based Cantonese instructor at Add Oil Cantonese. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from Hong Kong Shue Yan University and brings over 10 years of marketing experience across Hong Kong, New York City, and Toronto.
Her background spans advertising and hospitality marketing. Specializing in food, wine, and travel, Eva’s day-to-day work centres around storytelling, content creation, and connecting people to experiences through culture and communication.
With a strong interest in pop culture and social media, she brings a modern and relatable approach to teaching, helping students build confidence through real-life conversations and cultural context.
In her free time, she enjoys watching films, hiking, and training Muay Thai.
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Jemmy holds an MBA from the University of Hong Kong and a Master in Counselling from the University of South Australia. Before she moved to Canada, she was an HR practitioner where she ran in-house workshops on team building and leadership development. Admittedly, enabling her colleagues’ careers through coaching has been one of the biggest satisfactions in her professional life.
Fast forward to today, she has a renewed interest as an instructor to aid others in learning Cantonese, her own mother-tongue. In addition to Cantonese and English, both of which she’s functional in, Jemmy also speaks French and Mandarin at a conversational level. In fact, she spent her first year in Montreal learning French full time and enjoyed every minute of it. She enjoys learning together with her students, across all age groups, and finds it a most rewarding experience.
In her spare time, she enjoys reading, hiking, trying out new recipes and simply spending time with family and friends.
