Category Commmunity

Presentation to the Standing Committee of Council on Planning and Environment: The following is a point form summary of the actions, recommendations and intentions of our Greater Vancouver JCCA steering committee: • We appreciate the following recommendations in the Hastings…

David Suzuki is by training a biologist—a scientist—which to some people conjures up the image of a white-coated rationalist, devoid of emotion and bent on pure experiment. But no human being is really like that, not even economists. Neurologists tell…

By Lorene Oikawa October 26, 2010, North Vancouver As the visitors walked through the front doors of the Squamish Nation’s Chief Joe Mathias Centre, they were warmly greeted with fresh cedar branches waved around them. The sweet cleansing power of…

Kizuna kindled my enthusiasm for other artistic practices. Lately I find myself going to the theatre more, to modern dance, to art galleries. Also, having the opportunity to meet with Natalie, Miyuki and Greg has made me want to explore inter-artistic collaboration more. They say opera is the ultimate synthesis of all the arts, and I agree: if you’re living in Europe in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. I think we have the resources and talent to create something entirely new, something that speaks directly to us, while still honouring our past. And I think once we discover the recipe for this new multi-art form, we’ll kick opera’s ass.

I always dreamed of going to the United States and doing what I wanted to do. If everything worked out, I could even find a rich, tall husband in the States—that kind of thing. The idea of leaving Japan was almost defiant. My family and relatives thought this was a crazy dream, like becoming a Japanese Idol singer, so they didn’t take it seriously, but I did so well in English language class and international politics almost from day one. It was really effortless compared to any other subjects, so I started to say I would like to become a flight attendant, ambassador, or work for international cooperation so I could go overseas all the time. During the economic growth in Japan, Americanized style and pop culture was everywhere around me—we thought it was better and more successful than Japanese traditional style. And now it’s almost all over. It really didn’t take many years. It amazes me that what I was really longing for is failing badly.

The leader for the second generation would be the late Tom Shoyama, an economist who worked as deputy minister for Tommy Douglas in the CCF Saskatchewan government and helped to establish universal medicare. He went on to become a deputy minister of finance for finance ministers John Turner, Donald Macdonald and Jean Chretien and was an adviser on fiscal federalism to the late Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau.

For Natalie Purschwitz, getting out of bed in the morning and slipping on a pair of her favourite jeans or a pair of store-bought socks is a novel and welcome experience, given that she spent the last year of her…

Born in Edmonton and raised in a suburb called Sherwood Park, filmmaker and photographer Greg Masuda had what he calls a very ‘Canadian’ prairie upbringing. “We’d do Canadian things like play hockey and baseball, eat Canadian things like Kraft Dinner, perogies, and steaks. But occasionally some sukiyaki would find its way to the table or my Dad would say something in Japanese that none of us understood, and I’ve known how to use chopsticks since I can remember.

A Japanese artist, Takashi Murakami, has long been chosen by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential individuals in the world today. Born in Tokyo in 1963, he received his BFA, MFA and PhD from the Tokyo National…