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This conference will pay tribute to those generations of Japanese Canadians who, despite experiencing racism, restrictions, uprooting and loss during and after WWII, demonstrated resilience and the capacity to survive and overcome.

When it is completed, Heiwa Garden will be magnificent. It will indeed be a peaceful place where visitors will be able to read about the history of the Japanese Canadian community that once existed on Salt Spring Island and contributed so much to its wellbeing.

My theory is that the Japanese are very restricted in how they are allowed to express themselves in Japanese society. Flamenco is their excuse and channel of expression. Interestingly, there are more flamenco academies per capita in Japan then anywhere in the world!

In bringing a hip and contemporary attitude to a traditional Japanese art form (with the musical chops to pull it off), the Yoshida Brothers are bringing a new audience to this ancient instrument.

A woman buried with a piece of fallen star; a blind child riding on the back of the dreamer; a huge ship going nowhere; a panama hat; a barber; a goldfish seller; a thousand pigs. These extraordinary images are found in a series of extraordinary yet little-known tales written by Natsume Soseki, considered by many to be the foremost novelist of Meiji-era Japan.

In a series of 36 interlocking scenes, Iizuka's play explores the relationship between the imaginary and the real, and the lines and spaces that separate feelings and words, objects and images of objects, antiques and reproductions, and a person’s heritage and physical features.

For many fishermen, the lifting of restrictions against Japanese Canadians on April 1, 1949 was bittersweet. While they were now allowed to move anywhere in Canada, including back to the BC coast, it wasn’t that simple. Eight years had passed since they were ordered off the coast. All fishing boats had been confiscated and then sold or sunk. Some fishermen had taken up other careers in the east. Some were too old to return to fishing. And some were just too bitter at the way they had been treated by their own government to want to return.

I was deeply disappointed not to see any Japanese Canadian story in the Vancouver Sun’s An Immigrant’s Journey: 150 Years of Newcomers to BC last year. As expected, Chinese and Indians had their stories featured, and even someone from The…