The Bulletin

February 18, 2011

“Open Letter” to Son Studying in Japan: Things I Must Tell You …Though You (Think) You’ve Heard ’em All

And, this you’ve heard me say before, Japan is a very densely-layered ancient society with rich culture (e.g. variety of food) with strongly-held, complex values with constant, built-in pressure toward conformity that sometimes works in unfathomable ways. I’ve watched sensitive foreigners who want to gain acceptance, including those who are racially Japanese, even start seeing things and thinking like a Japanese without quite realizing it themselves.

February 18, 2011

President’s Message

The month of January has come and gone by very quickly. As of February 3, 2011, the Year of the Rabbit begins. The Rabbit is said to be the happiest sign of the Zodiac—gifted, nice to be with, refined, reserved, ambitious but not too much and be virtuous. Nobody ignores the Rabbit, as the Rabbit is lucky. With intelligence and hard work, a Rabbit can go far in life. I hope we all know a person who is born in the Year of the Rabbit.

February 18, 2011

Community Kitchen

Grateful that so far we haven’t had the predicted cold winter nor…

February 18, 2011

Editorial

Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were…

February 18, 2011

Brendan Uegama and Henry’s Glasses

One day, when we were only a week away from shooting and deep into construction, a friend of ours from Sunshine Valley came into the workshop with a Japanese Canadian woman and her son and grandson. She had been interned in Tashme when she was between 12 – 16 years old. They were just visiting, and had no idea we were making a film on the internment. We took her to the set to show her what we had built and once she stepped out of the car, she started to cry. Can you imagine going back there 65 years later and walking down a roadway reconstruction of Tashme?

January 10, 2011

Boats in the Harbour

It is not fair to say what I experienced in Japan is the same as what new Canadian immigrants must feel. We have a much stronger immigrant culture, one with a goal of emphasizing multiculturalism and embracing newcomers. Even those of us who were born in Canada still claim ties to the nations of our ancestors, as Neil Bissoondath points out. Anyone who can trace their lineage will call themselves half-Swedish or one-quarter French. Only those who trace their ancestry back to the earliest settlers will, at a loss, despairingly say, “I’m just Canadian.”