Summer is here on the calendar but hopefully it will come. Spring was so wet and cold, the flowers are slow in coming. Our Sogetsu Ikebana group had our yearly outing , and we went to visit the Rose Garden at Stanley Park on the 17 th of June and very few roses were out. We took the horse and buggy ride and it was COLD! When the weather warms up, they do have a very beautiful garden with a great varieties of plants and it would be a nice …

Hi everyone!
On June 28, there was a special reception held at the Vancouver Buddhist Temple to which many members of the Japanese Canadian and downtown eastside community were invited. If you didn’t already know, there is a concerted effort being made by members of the Coalition for “Saving the Legacy Sakura Cherry Trees at Oppenheimer Park” to protect these trees from being destroyed due to the redevelopment of Oppenheimer Park. The City of Vancouver is intending to move or remove some of these trees in its plans for a …

GOING GREEN
At 12:01 on Canada Day the price of gas at pumps throughout British Columbia rose by an additional 2.4 cents, all thanks to the new provincially implemented carbon tax. Now several weeks after the fact, this green government initiative is likely old news to most consumers. Whether you’ve made the effort to cut back on driving or simple swallowed the extra fuel costs, life in and out of vehicles rolls on.
But no one, it seems, regardless of their income bracket, likes to be taxed more than they already are. …

Kessa, conceived and choreographed by Ida, is a long-percolating response to his relationship with his grandmother, and his guilt at not having connected with her fully as she lay dying in the family home.

“May you live in interesting times . . .”
According to Wikipedia, this double-edged saying/curse is thought to originate in China, although no one has been able to verify this.
I suppose whether one views it is as a blessing or a curse depends on your socio-economic position during said interesting times. It’s much easier to look upon global warming, rising sea levels and political instability with sang-froid from a heavily fortified house on high ground and with a private jet at the ready.
For the rest of us commoners—in the west at …

Having heard my share of live jazz, rock and classical concerts in the 60-plus years of my life so far, I very rarely get excited with a performance nowadays to the point of, say, standing up and whooping wildly. But that’s exactly what happened the other night when I went to hear a jam session during the recent Vancouver International Jazz Festival. It was a rare magical moment that had all the right ingredients.
The music was some of the finest jazz you can hear on our planet today. It was …

I sat down with Gary Cristall and Harry Aoki last week at Nikkei Place. Gary is writing a book on the history of folk music in Canada and had been wanting to talk to Harry for quite some time. When I invited him along, he jumped at the chance. We covered a lot of ground in the course of our conversation and the following is just a portion of what we talked about.
JEG I You were involved in a redress movement in Alberta right after the war, something I’d never …

Later that night we braved the cold and wandered down to the hotel pub, which even by the lowly standards of the neighbourhood could be generously described as a dive. Amidst the hookers, hustlers, bikers, winos and junkies the presence of two cherubic Bulletin editors stood out like sore thumbs.

In the June Bulletin, we looked at the period from the end of 1984 to the end of 1986. During this period, the “new” Bulletin began to forge a new direction, playing a greater role in highlighting the achievements of community members—both past and present. In this issue we look at the years 1987 and 1988, a pivotal period in the history of The Bulletin and Canadian Nikkei community.
Two articles in the  January 1987 issue highlight the two primary preoccupations of the Vancouver Nikkei community—the struggle to achieve a negotiated …