Category Archives: Joy Kogawa & Kogawa House

Joy Kogawa will read her new book “Naomi's Tree” at Vancouver Kidsbooks

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It's Cherry Blossom Festival time in Vancouver, and Joy Kogawa has written a new children's book about a cherry tree titled “Naomi's Tree.

I LOVED the book Naomi's Road.  It was written as a children's version of her award winning novel Obasan.  It tells the story about the World War 2 internment of Japanese Canadians from a child's perspective.

When Joy grew up as a child in Vancouver, there was a cherry tree in the backyard of her home at 1450 West 64th Ave.  But unfortunately when Joy was 6 years old, she and her family were forced to leave their home and cherry tree behind because in 1942, they were sent to internment camps in the Kootenays.

The young Joy never forgot the home nor the cherry tree, and she wrote about them in her novel Obasan, and the children's version titled Naomi's Road. 

2005 was a busy year for Joy, as Obasan was chosen as the book for all Vancouverites to read in the One Book One Vancouver program at the Vancouver Public Library.  In September, an short opera based on Naomi's Road debuted by the Vancouver Opera Touring Ensemble and traveled to schools throughout BC.  But also in September, it was learned that Joy's childhood home was in danger of being demolished. 

A campaign to save the home was launched and in May 2006, the house was purchased by The Land Conservancy of BC.  In June, Joy was awarded the Order of BC.  I have written about many of these events on this website. 
Please see http://www.gunghaggisfatchoy.com/blog/JoyKogawaKogawaHouse

Joy Kogawa is coming to Kidbooks!!

Come celebrate Joy's new
book, Naomi's Tree, illustrated by Ruth Ohi.  This beautiful picture
book, based on the characters in her classic children's novel, Naomi's Tree looks at the internment of Canadians of Japanese descent during the Second World War.Naomissm.jpg

Date:  Thursday April 10th, 2008
Time:  7:00pm
Place:  Vancouver Kidsbooks – 3083 West Broadway, Vancouver
Tickets:  $5.00  Each person attending needs a ticket.

For more information or to purchase tickets, please contact us at Vancouver Kidsbooks (604-738-5335) or e-mail events@kidsbooks.ca

Please Note: Tickets
are fully redeemable toward Joy Kogawa's books on the night of the
event only.  If you are unable to attend, but would like signed copies,
please call or e-mail us in advance.

View our Flyer  (PDF)

This
event is jointly sponsored by Fitzhenry and Whiteside, Vancouver Cherry
Blossom Festival, The Land Conservancy of B.C. and Historic Joy Kogawa
House Society.

Sharon Butala packs Kogawa House for reading, and a workshop on memoir writing

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Author Sharon Butala mesmerized the packed audience at historic Joy Kogawa House on Friday night.  The Order of Canada author talked how she helped
established a writer in residence program at Wallace Stegner's childhood home in
Eastend, Saskatchewan. 

Butala is giving a weekend writing workshop about memoir writing at Kogawa House, marking the start of turning the historic literary landmark into a true writers-in-residence program for the City of Vancouver and the Canadian literary and writing community.

Butala read from her Governor General award nominated memoir book, The Perfection of the Morning: An Apprenticeship in Nature, and her new book Lilac Moon: Dreaming of the Real West

She also talked about the CBC Fifth Estate documentary she inspired and was a part of: CBC: The fifth estate – Death of A Beauty Queen – which investigated the unsolved 1963 murder of Butala's former high school friend.

She answered a few questions, some about her writing, and some about how she helped create a writers-in-residence program in Eastend SK.  Then afterwards, she signed copies of her books and chatted with the audience members.

For this past month, Butala has been living as a guest at Joy Kogawa's Vancouver appartment, while Kogawa lives in her primary residence in Toronto.  On Feb 3rd, Butala attended the Vancouver opera production “Voices of the Pacific Rim” with members of the Joy Kogawa House Society, and was introduced to some of the singers who had performed  the Naomi's Road opera, based on the children's novel by Joy Kogawa.

Sharon Butala and Historic Joy Kogawa House seem like a perfect fit.  This house where the 6 year old Joy Kogawa grew up in, and remembered through years of internment during WW2, and for years afterwards became realized in a memoir of sorts, the award winning novel Obasan.  Butala and her husband Peter, are also nationally recognized conservationists.  In 1996, they donated their 13,100-acre (5,300 ha) ranch near Eastend
to the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) to establish The Old Man on
His Back Prairie and Heritage Preserve (OMB).  It was in 2006, that Joy Kogawa House was purchased by The Land Conservancy of BC, to become Vancouver's first literary and historical landmark.

As a member of the Joy Kogawa House Society, I know that we are deeply appreciative of Sharon's work to help us develop a writer's-in-residence program for Historic Joy Kogawa house.  We thank Sharon for her wonderful spirit and commitment to our project.

Author Sharon Butala reads at Joy Kogawa House Friday Feb 22, and hosts writing workshop

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Sharon Butala is helping the Historic Joy Kogawa House Society with our goal to establish a writers in residence programs at the former childhood home of author Joy Kogawa. 

Tonight, Sharon Butala gives a 7:30pm reading at 1450 West 64th Ave.
On Saturday and Sunday, she conducts a writing workshop workshop about memoir writing.

This is the house that the then 6 year old Joy and her family left
behind their wonderful home in 1942, when they were sent to internment
camps because they were Japanese-Canadian.

A writing workshop and public reading with Sharon Butala

Writing the Memoir

Location: Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue, Vancouver

Date:
Reading on Friday, February 22, 7:30 to 9 p.m.; writing workshop on
Saturday, February 23, and Sunday, February 24, 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Cost: To be determined. Space is limited. To secure a seat, please register by emailing ametten at telus dot net.

Many
writers have demonstrated that even the most glamorous lives–of
celebrities, war heroes, or politicians–can make for dull reading. Yet
the most ordinary lives can make thrilling reading. How does the
storyteller capture the essence of the story and develop a reader's
interest? What are memoirs really about, and why write them? Through
discussion, question and answer, exercises, and examining successful
memoirs, this workshop will endeavour to answer such questions, as well
as to show how memoirs might be structured, and how a writer decides
what to put in and what to leave out. Memoirs are therapy for both
writer and reader, but they are also good stories: at their best, they
are art.

Sharon Butala is an award-winning author of both fiction
and non-fiction. Her memoir, The Perfection of the Morning, was a
Canadian bestseller and a finalist for the Governor General's Award. Ms
Butala has been called one of Canada's true visionaries. In 2002 she
was honoured as an Officer of the Order of Canada. Her newest work, The
Girl in Saskatoon: A Meditation on Memory and Murder (HarperCollins
Canada), will be in bookstores in March.

Watch this website over the next few days for more information

Ruth Ozeki and Shaena Lambert read at historic Joy Kogawa House – Wonderful community chemistry for Vancouver's new literary landmark

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Ruth Ozeki and Shaena Lambert read at historic Joy Kogawa House
Wonderful community chemistry for Vancouver's new literary landmark


Writers Shaena Lambert, Joy Kogawa and Ruth Ozeki were featured at the November 10th “War and Remembrance” event at historic Joy Kogawa House.- photo Deb Martin

Magic happens sometimes in unexpected places, and with unexpected people.  Joy Kogawa, author of Obasan and Naomi's Road, shared with the audience that she has been continually amazed at the way the universe has unfolded to not only save her childhood home from demolition last year – but also to continue build a foundation for the planned literary landmark and writers-in-residence program for historic Joy Kogawa House.

Tonight's
event was perfect with both authors Shaena Lambert and Ruth Ozeki
reading their most recent works that deal with the consequences of the
WW2 Hiroshima bombing.  How fitting that the stars aligned to have Ruth
come to Vancouver from between her busy commutes between Cortes Island
and New York City to settle in Kogawa House on the day before
Remembrance Day. 

The reading event went well tonight. 
80 people.  30 over the earlier cap of 50 people.  We had standing room
only upstairs, rather than turn people away.  Guess we will have to knock out the walls into the
former music room and take out bathroom – both added in 2004 by the
last owner… as we start our restoration early.

The audience was divided into two groups; Upstairs with Ruth Ozeki; and downstairs with Shaena Lambert.  Tamsin Baker of TLC (The Land Conservancy of BC) welcomed the upstairs audience and gave a brief history of the saving of Joy Kogawa House by the TLC and the Save Kogawa House Committee.  I added to that history, as a member of the now renamed History Joy Kogawa House Society, then introduced author Ruth Ozeki. 

Ruth is the descendant of Japanese-Americans who were interned during WW2.  Her grandfather was one of the few Japanese-Americans interned in Hawaii, while her mother was put under house arrest while attending university in Wisconsin.  Her book “My Year of Meats” was the 2007 choice for the One Book One Vancouver program at the Vancouver Public Library. 

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Ruth read from “Click”, a special collaborative book for Amnesty International.  The first chapter was written by Linda Sue Park, and Ruth wrote the fourth chapter.

After a 40 minute session and an intermission, the authors switched locations with Ruth moving downstairs, and Shaena moving upstairs. 

Shaena read from her new novel Radiance, set in 1952 and based on true events in which Keiko Kitagawa arrives in New York City from Japan, as the “Hiroshima Maiden” who undergoes plastic surgery to remove a scar caused by the Hiroshima bomb.

After the readings, each author took questions.  Books were available for sale, including Click, Radiance and titles by Joy Kogawa.

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Following the close of the event, members of Joy Kogawa House Society hosted a dinner for authors Joy Kogawa, Ruth Ozeki and Shaena Lambert at the Red Star Seafood Chinese restaurant.  It was wonderful to see and talk with everybody in such good spirits after the successful event.  Everybody on this committee is dedicated to the cause of seeing Joy Kogawa House become a literary landmark for Vancouver and to develop a writers-in-residence program.  And they are all good-hearted people that trust and like each other.  What a joy it is to be on this committee.  It was particularly amazing to see the wonderful chemistry between Ruth and Shaena who had only met once before.

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Another unexpected twist of events happened when Todd Wong started telling Ruth about the Pacific Origami conference being held in Vancouver.  Ruth asked Todd to fold something, then suddenly Joy and Ruth were also very involved in folding, as a traditional crane base became an 8-point star, then finally a pegasus winged horse.  Simply magic.

Nov 10th, Joy Kogawa House event: War and Remembrance featuring authors Ruth Ozeki and Shaena Lambert

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Nov 10th, Joy Kogawa House event: 
War and Remembrance
featuring authors Ruth Ozeki and Shaena Lambert



Joy and brother Tim at Kogawa House pre-1942…
Joy and brother Tim with neighbood friends – the Steeves boys.
Joy at the house when it was threatened with demolition… 
Joy and Richmond school children during the Save Kogawa House campaign.
Joy with old childhood friend Mr. Steevs, at last year's September Open House event.

This is going to be an incredible event.  The Joy Kogawa House Society has now been incorporated as a society.

Ruth Ozeki  was the 2007 author for the One Book One Vancouver program at the Vancouver Public Library, launching in May.  Shaena Lambert is also an incredibly gifted and moving writer.

We are beginning our next phase of fundraising to preserve and restore the house to it's 1942 character, when Joy lived at the house, before the family was sent to WW2 internment camps at Slocan, and before the house was confiscated by the Canadian government.

And… Joy Kogawa has suprised her friends and family in Metro Vancouver by popping into town last week to help celebrate her daughter's birthday….   She will attend our Nov 10th special reading event.  Yipppeee!!!!
Joy and her daughter Dee Dee enjoy a laugh and a smile with oranges at a family dinner in April – photo Todd Wong


A Place of Compassion: Joy Kogawa's Dream Vancouver statement

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A Place of Compassion:
Joy Kogawa's Dream Vancouver statement


Joy Kogawa holds up her arms to embrace and support everything she loves in the world
– photo Todd Wong

Joy Kogawa, author of Obasan, has written A Place of Compassion for her submission  to the Dream Vancouver conference and website, organized by Think City. While Joy will not be attending the conference, I will be as one of the directors of the Joy Kogawa House Society. 

Dream Vancouver is an all-day conference which will take
participants from their dreams about Vancouver to a possible agenda for
change. The conference will be facilitated by Bliss Browne, internationally-renowned speaker and president of Imagine Chicago.  Former City of Vancouver Co-Director of Current Planning Larry Beasley is key note speaker. 
Ms. Browne will then facilitate a discussion-based session which will
take participants through a series of questions designed to bring them
to a collective vision of what the city could be. 

To attend you must register, click here.

Registration: 9:30 am – 10:00 am

Conference: 10:00 am – 3:30 pm

Reception: 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm

Location: Jewish Community Centre, 950 W. 41st Avenue, Vancouver (at Oak Street).

– photo courtesy Joy Kogawa

Is Joy a Vancouver dreamer?  She was born in Vancouver in 1935.  During WW2 in 1942, when she was 6 years old, her family was removed from Vancouver and sent to internment camps for Japanese-Canadians.  She forever dreamed about returning to the the house in Vancouver's Marpole neighborhood, even after the Canadian government confiscated the property of the Japanese-Canadian internment victims, and resettled them to work as labourers on Alberta beet farms.  She lives mostly in Toronto but returns to Vancouver often, and has great hopes for Vancouver as a city, and as a cultural entity.

Joy Kogawa and her brother Rev. Timothy Nakayama, at the opening event for Obasan, the 2005 choice for One Book One Vancouver at the Vancouver Public Library – photo Todd Wong

Joy is acknowledged as one of Canada's most important writers in the 20th Century for her ground breaking novel Obasan – a story about the impact of the internment on the Japanese Canadian community.  Since May 2005, when I met Joy, at the first Obasan event for One Book, One Vancouver event at the Vancouver Public Library, our developing friendship was been a wild ride as I became a key player on the Save Kogawa House committee (See my articles on Joy Kogawa & Kogawa House).


I have witnessed Joy speak in numerous circumstances and she always seems to have an unwavering position that calls for peace and compassion in so many circumstances.  It embraces her anti-war stance, the Japanese-Canadian redress, South African apartheid, the Chinese-Canadian head tax issue, Japanese atrocities against China in WW2, the history of her ancestor's home of Okinawa, the naming of the 401 Burrard building after Howard Green.  Joy doesn't look to find blame for right or wrong, she looks to find resolution.

Joy
Kogawa and Todd Wong at the 2006 Canadian Club Vancouver's annual Order
of Canada / Flag Day luncheon.  Joy was key note speaker, and Todd was
one of the event organizers – photo Deb Martin

Vancouver has long had a reputation for a history with peace activism.  This is part of our social-cultural make up, and can be embodied through social policy initiatives.  Perhaps it has become such because so many people have come to Vancouver after leaving war, destruction, starvation, revolution, upheaval in their home lands.

Joy has given Dream Vancouver a very apt and fitting dream statement to find reconciliation and understanding “within and between the
faiths, between rich and poor, among immigrant groups, in established
neighbourhoods, in the Downtown Eastside, among those who are still
suffering from unresolved injustices of the near and distant past can
come to healing and hope and inner freedom.”

Joy
Kogawa and children from Tomsett Elementary School in Richmond.  After
seeing the Vancouver Opera Touring Ensembles production of “Naomi's
Road”, the children were inspired to helps save Kogawa House from
demolition.  Joy and the children stand in front of the house for their own private tour and reading event. – photo Joan Young

On November 10th, come to the 2nd open house event at Kogawa House.
Sunday, 3-5pm.  1450 West 64th Ave. (just East of Granville St.)
Admission is by donation.  Proceeds go to restoring historic Joy Kogawa House, now owned by The Land Conservancy of BC.

A Place of Compassion

Posted October 15th, 2007 in 

Joy Kogawa, poet and novelist: The
dream I have for this west-coast city on the edge of the peaceable
ocean is the dream I have for the world – a dream of peace. What better
time than this to abolish war as we face our common planetary fate?

We have choices – to continue blithely on our way, fighting and
devouring one another for the rest of our dwindling days, or we can
individually and collectively lay down our weapons and practice the
ways of truth and reconciliation, cooperation and peace.

In a city where east-west faces and races meet and mix, where
cultures both clash and blend, the ways of peace can be cultivated,
watered, nurtured and the seeds of that action can fly to the farthest
corners of our hearts and the world.

As a Japanese Canadian, I have welcomed conversations with two
granddaughters of Howard Green, the politician whose public words
against us during the Second World War were dreaded in our community.
If they can seek to make peace with us on behalf of the grandfather
they loved, ought we not to walk with them? What an opportunity for
peace making and for walking on.

And ought we not, as Canadian descendants from Japan, to stand with
those Canadian descendants of China, who seek a fulsome parliamentary
acknowledgment from the country of our ancestors for the horrors their
ancestors faced in the Rape of Nanking? Or is it our choice to turn
aside and say, “These are no concerns of ours.” I believe that the
morally appropriate action is to respond to those who suffer and who
call our names.

But it is not for me to say what is right for anyone else. We are
each required to struggle with our own conscience and to respond to the
many voices that call us.

Joy Kogawa House Society is now legal…. next step – restore the house

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Joy Kogawa House Society is now legal…. next step – restore the house

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It has now been just been over two years since we launched the drive to save historic Joy Kogawa House from demolition.  It was mid-September when a demolition permit inquiry was made, but by the end of the week, we had notified news media, and made announcements at the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop Community Dinner, Vancouver Arts Awards and Word On The Street book and magazine fair. 

It was an amazingly busy week for Joy, as she was feted by the One Book One Vancouver finale at Word On the Street, and received the community builder's award from the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop.  As well Vancouver Opera launched the premiere of “Naomi's Road” based on Joy's children's novel of the same name – a retelling of her famous novel Obasan.

Soon after in November, we held a special “Kogawa House Awareness
event” at the Vancouver Public Library where we presented the Vancouver
Opera Touring Ensemble's production of “Naomi's Road” in 2005.  In December, the Land Conservancy of BC became our partner in the struggle to save the house, and to lead our fundraising efforts.

By May 2006, the house had been paid in full by The Land Conservancy of BC, and we breathed a collective sigh of relief.  We celebrated in June when Joy received the Order of BC.

On Sep 15, 2006, we held the first public open house event. One of the first people through the door was a childhood friend of Joy and her brother Tim.  “We didn't know where you had gone,” said Ralph Steeves.  Tears were in everybody's eyes at witnessing this reunion of two friends, 63 years later.

Last month, Joy's brother, Rev. Timothy Nakayama, came to visit the house he had left at age 10 in 1942.  Timothy shared his recollections of the house and yard, as we try to determine ways to restore the house to its 1942 character when their family was forced to leave the house, and board a train taking them to internment camps near Slocan BC.

We will hold the next public open house event on November 10th.  Special guest speakers will be authors Ruth Ozeki and Shaena Lambert.  The theme is War and Remembrance.

The
Historic Joy Kogawa House Society is now incorporated with the BC
Registry of Societies, which means we’re now a legal entity that can
carry forward the purposes of the society:

Purposes

            The purposes of the Society shall be:

 

1.                  To
operate and preserve the former Joy Kogawa family home at 1450 West
64th Avenue in Vancouver as a heritage and cultural centre and as a
site of healing and reconciliation.

2.                  To
establish in the former Joy Kogawa family home a centre for writers in
which they can reflect on issues of conscience and reconciliation and
write about their own personal experiences or the experiences of
others, past or present.

3.                  To promote and negotiate the raising of funds for the pursuit of the Society’s purposes.

4.                  To
encourage in the former Joy Kogawa family home educational programming
along themes of social justice and social history, and to provide
docent services for such programming.

5.                  To advocate on behalf of the continuing operation of the house in the public interest consistent with the above purposes.

For contacts in Vancouver
Call Ann-Marie Metten or Todd Wong

Generations: The Chan Legacy on CBC Newsworld. July 29th – 4pm and midnight

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Generations: The Chan Legacy on CBC Newsworld.
July 29th – 4pm and midnight

The
Chan Legacy is the lead episode in the new documentary series
Generations on CBC Newsworld.  It debuted on July 4th – my grandmother's 97th birthday.

How fitting!  Because the show is about her grand-father Rev. Chan Yu Tan who came to Canada in 1896 as a Christian missionary.

Feedback
has been very positive.  Family members are very proud.  Friends are
very supportive.  Historians are enthusiastic. Strangers are thrilled.

Listen to Auntie Helen and Uncle Victor tell stories about Rev. and Mrs. Chan, and about growing up in pre-WW2 BC, and facing racial discrimination.  Uncle Victor Wong also tells about enlisting as a Canadian soldier to go behind enemy lines in the Pacific for suicide squadrons, fighting for Canada, even though Chinese-Canadians could not vote in the country of their birth.

The next generations assimiliated more easily into Canadian culture.  Gary Lee became an actor and singer.  Janice Wong became a visual artist and author of the book CHOW: From China to Canada – memories of food and family, which addressed the history of Rev. Chan coming to Canada, and how Janice's dad started a Chinese restaurant in Prince Albert SK.

Then there is Todd Wong – cultural and community activist who founded Gung Haggis Fat Choy: Toddish McWong's Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner – which inspired a CBC Vancouver television performance special.  Todd is shown active in the dragon boat community, and speaking at a Terry Fox Run in the role of a 16 year cancer survivor.  Renowned Japanese-Canadian author Joy Kogawa makes an appearance, as Todd was also involved in helping to save Kogawa's childhood home from demolition and to turn it into a national historic and literary landmark.

July 29th Sunday – repeats at midnight

  4:00 p.m. Generations: The Chan Legacy
– Missionaries from China come to the West Coast help Westernize Chinese immigrant workers in the late 1800's.		 Generations: The Chan Legacy

J

Kilts and family history abound during two episodes of the 6-part Generations series on CBC Newsworld

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Kilts and family history abound during two episodes of the 6-part Generations series on CBC Newsworld

Find
out what a 250 year old Anglophone family in Quebec City and a 120 year
old Chinese-Canadian family in Vancouver have in common.

Both have:
bagpipes and kilts
+ accordion music
+ canoe/dragon boat racing
+ immigration as a topic
+ Church music
+ archival photos/newsreels of an ex-premier
+ cultural/racial discrimination stories
+ prominent Canadian historical events to show how
   the families embraced them or were challenged by them
+ both featured saving a historical literary landmark.
+ younger generation learning the non-English language

Generations: The Chan Legacy features Todd Wong, founder of Gung Haggis Fat Choy, a quirky Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner, which inspired a CBC Vancouver television performance special.  Todd's involvements with Terry Fox Run, Joy Kogawa House campaign and dragon boat racing are also shown.

July 29th 4pm PST / July 30th 12am

4:00 p.m. Generations: The Chan Legacy
– Missionaries from China come to the West Coast help Westernize Chinese immigrant workers in the late 1800's.		 Generations: The Chan Legacy

August 5th 4pm PST

4:00 p.m. Generations: The Blairs of Quebec
– An Anglophone family with 250 years of history in Quebec City struggles to maintain it's heritage.		 Generations: The Blairs of Quebec


July 4, 10 pm ET/PT, July 8 10 am ET, July 29, 7 pm ET
The
documentary begins with Todd Wong playing the accordion, wearing a
kilt. He promotes cultural fusion, and in doing so, he honours the
legacy of his great, great, grandfather Reverend Chan Yu Tan. The Chans
go back seven generations in Canada and are one of the oldest families
on the West Coast.
Chan family
The Chan family
Reverend
Chan and his wife Wong Chiu Lin left China for Victoria in 1896 at a
time when most Chinese immigrants were simple labourers, houseboys and
laundrymen who had come to British Columbia to build the railroad or
work in the mines. The Chans were different. They were educated and
Westernized Methodist Church missionaries who came to convert the
Chinese already in Canada, and teach them English. The Chans were a
family with status and they believed in integration. However even they
could not escape the racism that existed at the time, the notorious
head tax and laws that excluded the Chinese from citizenship.
In
the documentary, Reverend Chan's granddaughter Helen Lee, grandson
Victor Wong, and great grandson Gary Lee recall being barred from
theaters, swimming pools and restaurants. The Chinese were not allowed
to become doctors or lawyers, pharmacists or teachers. Still, several
members of the Chan family served in World War II, because they felt
they were Canadian and wanted to contribute. Finally, in 1947, Chinese
born in Canada were granted citizenship and the right to vote.

Today,
Todd Wong, represents a younger generation of successful professionals
and entrepreneurs scattered across North America. He promotes his own
brand of cultural integration through an annual event in Vancouver
called Gung Haggis Fat Choy. It's a celebration that joins Chinese New
Year with Robbie Burns Day, and brings together the two cultures that
once lived completely separately in the early days of British Columbia.

We
also meet a member of the youngest generation, teenager Tracey Hinder,
who also cherishes the legacy of Reverend Chan, but in contrast to his
desire to promote English she is studying mandarin and longs to visit
the birthplace of her ancestors.

Produced by Halya Kuchmij, narrated by Michelle Cheung.

July 11, 10 pm ET/PT, July 15, 10 am ET, August 5, 7 pm ET

For
250 years, the Blair family has been part of the Protestant Anglophone
community of Quebec City. The Anglophones were once the dominant
cultural and economic force in the city, but now they are a tiny
minority, and those who have chosen to stay have had to adapt to a very
different world. Louisa Blair guides us through the story of her
family, which is also the story of a community that had to change.
Ronnie Blair
Ronnie Blair

The
senior member of the family today is Ronnie Blair. He grew up in
Quebec, but like generations of Blairs before him, he worked his way up
the corporate ladder in the Price Company with the lumber barons of the
Saguenay. Ronnie Blair's great grandfather came to the Saguenay from
Scotland in 1842. Ronnie's mother was Jean Marsh. Her roots go back to
the first English families to make Quebec home after British troops
defeated the French on the Plains of Abraham in 1759. The Marsh family
amassed a fortune in the shoe industry in Quebec City.

The
Marshes and the Blairs were part of a privileged establishment that
lived separately from the Catholics and the Francophones, with their
own churches and institutions. The Garrison Club for instance, is a
social club that is still an inner sanctum for Quebec's Anglo
businessmen.

Blair family
The Blair family

Work took Ronnie Blair and his family to England in the 1960’s but his
children longed to return to Canada, and to Quebec City. Alison Blair
was the first to return, as a student, in 1972. Her brother David
followed in 1974. Both were excited by the political and social changes
that had taken place during the Quiet Revolution in Quebec and threw
themselves into everything Francophone. David learned to speak French,
married a French Canadian and settled into a law practice.

Then
came the Referendum of 1995, a painful moment in the history of the
Anglophone community, and for the passionate Blairs. But David decided
he was in Quebec to stay, and today his children are bilingual and
bicultural. More recently his sister Louisa also returned to Quebec
City and a desire to rediscover her past led her to write a book
called, The Anglos, the Hidden Face of Quebec. Her daughter is also is
growing up bilingual and bicultural, representing a new generation
comfortable in both worlds.

Produced by Jennifer Clibbon and Lynne Robson.

Cherry Blossoms at Kogawa House

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Cherry Blossoms at Kogawa House

The cherry blossoms have been out everywhere in Vancouver since late
March.   In mid-April I was driving through Vancouver's
Marpole neighborhood, when I thought I should go visit Joy Kogawa's
childhood home at 1450 West 64th Ave.

It had been back the summer of 2005, when I had received an e-mail from
Ann-Marie Metten that Joy Kogawa's beloved cherry tree was diseased and
dying.  She and a group that included then Vancouver city councillor
Jim Green, gathered grafts from the cherry tree to try to preserve it
for future incarnations – because it was feared that the owner would
not give up the house.

This was the house that the Save Kogawa House Committee,
which I was part of, had worked so hard to save from demolition, when
the owner decided to draw up plans to demolish the house and build a
new one.  It was an intensive awareness campaign from September to
December when The Land Conservancy of BC decided
to step in and take on this project, deeming it a worthy Vancouver
landmark of cultural and historical importance.  Then it was from
December until May, as we tried to raise funds to save the house…
almost taking a mortgage out before an anomynous donor stepped in with
almost $300,000 to allow TLC to purchase the house. 

But now the task is to continue raising funds and awareness to both
renovate the home and restore it to the qualities it had before Joy and
her family were forced to leave their house due to enforced internment
of Japanese Canadians during WW2 – even though they were born in
Canada!  We also want to build an endowment and create a
writers-in-residence program as well as community programming.

Last spring, Joy was living in Vancouver, and she went to visit the
cherry tree to find a few spare blossoms.  The tree was
sickly.  At the open house in September – Joy placed manure around
the tree's base, spoke kind words and blessings for the tree.  Joy
soon returned to Toronto, but has returned to Vancouver briefly for
Christmas with her daughter and grandchildren and recently at the end
of March to see relatives and to give a reading for the Alcuin Society
at Kogawa House on March 30th.

I drove past the front of the house… everything looks nice, except the white picket fence has fallen down. 

I drove around the back of the house… and saw a most beautiful sight.  The cherry tree was in full bloom.

It is like the tree (and the house) knows it has a new life.  It is an old tree but heavy and full with blossoms.
Beautiful… I know if Joy saw the tree with its blossoms, there would be tears of happiness in her eyes.