Amidst the pulsing rhythms of the drums at Taikotroniks, you might be surprised to also find a generous helping of blips, whirs, and other...

A woman ran up the stairs, I live on the second floor, screaming, “Please help me!” She was out-of-control, so I had to shake her to get her into some sense of reality. I brought her into my apartment in the doorway, wrapped my arms around her telling her, “Gambatte.” She was delivering the early morning paper and had left her children alone at home. Then when the shaking stopped, we went outside, it was pitch black.

Filmmaker Linda Ohama, who splits her time between Vancouver and Onomichi in Hiroshima prefecture, was in Vancouver preparing to return to Onomichi when the earthquake struck. Like many others, she was galvanised by the images she saw of the awful destruction being wreaked on the countryside. As she wrote to friends in the community the day the news broke, “I cannot stand looking at all the images and hearing from so many friends about the earthquake victims and families. We need to do something.”

Over 50 members of the Japanese Canadian arts, business, culture, community and student groups, representing more than 20 different organizations, met together at the office of . . .

On behalf of the National Association of Japanese Canadians and its member organizations, I would like to offer our sincere condolences to the people of Japan and the Japanese Government for the loss of life and property . . .

The Greater Vancouver JCCA expresses our heartfelt concern for the people in Japan who have been devastated by the recent horrific earthquake and tsunami. We also think about relatives and families here who are waiting for news of their loved ones.

For those wishing further . . .

“It is challenging especially in the first season when you think—this is so hard and I’m cold and wet and splashing everyone, I have blisters & bruises on various body parts and I ache! And you are absolutely horrified to be hitting other paddles because you haven’t got the timing, much less the technique. Then at some point you realize you are pretty well in sync most of the time and you haven’t drowned anybody with your splashing and the boat is moving through the waves and you are part of the engine moving this huge heavy monster. In fact the boat is gliding and you are alive and in a beautiful place.”

Boivin says he wants “to speak of connections between people and of the magnitude of their influence on one another. To whom do we owe the person we become? How do other beings collide with our own existence and ultimately, what shapes our identity? One by one, humans participate in the world, leaving behind a signature, a trace that someone else will find and make his own.

The first thing I thought when I held my baby in my arms was “now there is a possibility that when I die, this person will hold me and watch me die.” That had a very strong impact on me as a performer. Raising kids is a continual series of small (sometimes painful, sometimes joyful) details. But I get to practice my patience every day for 14 years! That skill is very helpful when you try to create anything from zero. I have these things about family and art. When I young in my own family I always thought there is no ART in here. Good art is in the quiet museums, nice cool-looking theatres, smoky cafés, or maybe eccentric crazy studios. Usually the places families go are noisy, crowded, sometime smelly, dirty, everyday life places. Since I have a family of my own I have to go to those places, far from the cool arts scene. But I started finding great art hiding in all of this ordinary, boring, everyday stuff.