Category Editorial

by John Endo Greenaway

Of a time . . .

In retrospect, walking through the door that night on Cordova Street, guitar in hand, changed the trajectory of my life. Following my performance, I was approached by a group of folks who invited me to join their band, Kokuho Rose. And just like that, I was part of a community.

Generation “N”

It was a revelation to discover that this new community I was suddenly part of was in fact made up of three distinct generations: the issei, my grandparent’s generation, whom I couldn’t understand; the sansei, as described above; and the nisei, who fit neither description.

Happy New Year!

If there is one thing that separates childhood from adulthood, it is the perception of snow. For those of us who have to drive anywhere (and I’m talking west coast here – all you east of the Rockies folks can…

The beginning of memory

In the narrative, birds fly above the earth, endlessly circling, with no place to land. When the father of one of the birds dies, the flock is perplexed—there is nowhere to bury him. After some thought, the young bird buries her father in the back of her head. This, says Anderson, is the beginning of memory . . .

On the nature of memory and remembering

It is one thing to go back over one’s own memories—events that shaped us, for better or for worse. But what is it that drives us to go back over events that we were not part of, that happened, in many cases, before we were even born? What is it that moves us to ruminate on the past? I suppose you could quote George Santayana, who famously said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Measuring Success

When the Japanese Canadian Redress settlement was signed on September 22, 1988, I was 29 years old. Although the settlement had no direct impact on me, there was one way that I did benefit directly. A short time after the…

On music, sun & community

From the outside, to those who have never attended the Folk Festival, it can seem like nothing more than an exotic mélange of aging hippies, pierced, tattooed youths and assorted other anti-establishment types squatting in the dirt in front of small stages to listen to music that would never be heard anywhere else outside of the CBC.