Joy Kogawa is keynote speaker for “Order of Canada / Flag Day” luncheon hosted by Canadian Club

Harry
Aoki, Const. Bob Underhill, Joy Kogawa and Dr. Jean Watters (president
of Canadian Club).  Joy Kogawa was the keynote speaker for the
“Order of Canada / Flag Day” luncheon, and Harry provided the “gift of
song.” – photo Todd Wong.

It was a good day for Save Kogawa House and the Canadian Club
on Flag Day, the 41st anniversary of the Maple Leaf flag, first
unveiled in 1965.    Joy Kogawa was the keynote speaker
for the annual “Order of Canada / Flag Day” luncheon hosted by the
Canadian Club.  Recent BC Order of Canada recipients named in 2005
were honoured with a special ceremony remniscent of the actual
investiture ceremony that takes place at Rideau Hall with the Governor
General.

The Canadian Club is committed to ensuring that each of
its major events all feature an abundance of students in the
audience.  This makes for a very interesting dynamic as many
students began arriving as early as 11am, and the lobby filled with
mingling guests.  There was a definite buzz in the air that
something special was happening.  I spoke with the Canadian Club
members that I knew, as well as helping our committee co-chair Andrew
Winstanley to organize some journalism students from BCIT, who were
doing a news piece on our event.  I also spoke with friends Dr.
Wallace Chung and his wife Dr. Madeline Chung who had delivered
me.  I made a joke as I introduced her to my friends from The Land
Conservancy…  “If Dr. Madeline had dropped me there wouldn't be
a Gung Haggis Fat Choy!”

It was a large head table, and they all
gathered in the lobby, as everybody in the ballroom was asked to sit
down.  Suddenly, the droning of bagpipes was heard, as Pipe
Corporal Rosalie MacDonald, British Columbia Regiment, led the
procession into the ballroom.  She was followed by CC president,
Dr. Jean Watters, Joy Kogawa, and the rest of the 27 member head
table.  The procession came into the centre of the room, and
walked around the table to each find their place – amazing!

MC
Margaret Gallagher welcomed singers Madeline Busby and Meghan Robinson
of the Vancouver Bach Children's Chorus to lead the singing of O
Canada.  This was extra special for young Madeline as her father
Peter Busby was a new Member of the Order of Canada, and being honoured
today.

Rose Point, distinguished Elder from the Musqueam First
Nation, led an invocation thanking the peoples of the land and the
Earth.  I learned that “Hich Ka, Siem” means “Thank you, Honoured
One.”

Dr. Jean Watters, president of the Canadian Club of
Vancouver, gave a warm welcome and read greetings from BC Premier
Gordon Campbell, then announced the Club's newest gold-level sponsor,
Kwantlen University College, and thanked returning event sponsor, Grant
Thornton Chartered Accountants.

MC Margaret Gallagher next
introduced the members of the Head Table which also included new OC
inductees Stewart Blusson, James Cameron Hagg, Peter Busby, Dr. Wallace
Chung, Thelma Finlayson, Nancy McKinstry, and Basil
Stuart-Stubbs.  Also joining the head table were former CC member
Patricia Graham, plus Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan, Enzo Guerriero and
Skip Triplett.

The wonderful birthday cake celebrating the 41st anniversary of the Maple Leaf flag – photo Deb Martin.

Lunch
had begun with a Greek salad, then an entre of chicken breast with
mushrooms, very skinny asparagus and mashed potatoes.  It was
amazingly tasty, and the wait staff was very attentive. I took some
time to ensure that my table guests were all looked after, as I had
sponsored one table, and set up another table for the Save Kogawa House
committee and The Land Conservancy.  We had a wonderful group that
included Tamsin Baker, Heather Skydt, Nancy Tiffin and Rich
Kenney.  From the Save Kogawa House committee we had myself,
Ann-Marie Metten, David Kogawa, Ellen Crowe-Swords, Richard Hopkins and
Deb Martin. My guests also included friend Tony Breen and my cousin
Rhonda Larrabee.

Skip Triplett, the president of Kwantlen
University College, introduced Joy Kogawa, highlighting her many
achievements, such as six universities across the country, have
bestowed upon her the
titles of , Doctor of Laws, Doctor of Letters and Doctor of
Divinity.  She is named in Almanac's recent
book of Greatest British Columbians and her first novel Obasan, is
listed as one of Canada's most important books.

Joy spoke to
the audience and acknowledged that while the audience included both
children and many esteemed and honoured Canadians, that she felt it was
the children who were the most important because they represented
Canada's future.  She spoke about how by recieving the Order of
Canada, it gave her a sense of belonging, and that by Vancouver Public
Library honouring her as the 2005 selection for the One Book One
Vancouver program, it meant that Vancouver accepted and wanted her –
this same city from which she had been rejected from in 1942.

She
told a story about standing in line for the Order of Canada, and a
person next to her had told her that they had “visited her
country.”  Incredulously… she was telling a story about how
people in 1986 still assumed that because she had a Japanese name and a
Japanese face that she was from another country other than
Canada.  Her reply was simple.  I have visited “your country”
too, in fact… I was born in it.”

Joy talked about how racism
shapes our cultures and our sense of belonging, knowing that their was
much cultural and racial diversity amongst both the students and the
adults in the room.  She talked about the future of Canada, and
introduced her grand-daughter – half-Japanese, and half-Caucasian,
asking her to stand up.  She did so shyly, encouraged by her
grandfather, David Kogawa, sitting next to me.  Then next she said
that Todd Wong also represented the future of Canada, because of my
activities in cultural diversity.  I sat surprised until Mayor Sam
Sullivan gently said to me “Stand up Todd.”

Constable Bob Underhill, Joy Kogawa and Todd Wong – wearing the “Maple Leaf Tartan”. – photo Deb Martin.

People listened
attentively to Joy speak about how to live our lives despite incredible
challenges.  She said that even up to last night, she wasn't sure
what she would speak about.  But with the prompting of an e-mail
from me… a single word came to her… TRUST.  She expounded that
we must learn to trust ourselves and to act upon our
inspirations.  It was a wonderful talk – warm and heartfelt. 
And many CC boardmembers came up to me afterwords, saying how wonderful
a speaker she had been, and how perfect for the event.

But next
to follow was a gift of song, as a thank you present from the CC to
Joy.  MC Margaret Gallagher introduced Harry Aoki, who himself had
been forced to leave Vancouver during the so-called “coastal
evacuation.”  I knew that Harry was a perfect choice because Joy
had partially based the creation of the Naomi's Road character of
Steven Nakane on Harry.  Because of the internment of Japanese
Canadians, Harry had been forced to leave behind his beloved violin,
and could only take his harmonica with him. Joy always remembered
listening to Harry play harmonica at the music competitions at the
community gatherings following the internment, in Alberta.

Harry
introduced a duo piece as something he had performed before while in
Romania.  They had asked him for something Canadian… “What is
Canadian?” he questioned to the audience, but he said he drew on
something from his own Japanese ancestry, and played a country hoe-down
piece.  As he played you could see the smiles of people throughout
the audience, as they nodded to the rhythm of Harry's
performance.  After the luncheon, OC member Dal Richards, noted
Vancouver band leader and musical legend, went straight over to Harry
to congratulate and talk with him.

Harry Aoki and Dal Richard talk music following the luncheon -photo D. Martin

But the luncheon wasn't over yet.  Next came the Cake Cutting Ceremony
with RCMP Constable Bob Underhill who had selected two students to
participate.  Everybody sang “Happy Birthday” to the Maple Leaf flag.

Dr.
Watters, Joy Kogawa with Enzo Guerriero (Celebrate Canada president)
came up to the stage to each welcome the new 2005 Order of Canada
Appointees resident in Vancouver.  Linda Johnston from Canadian
Heritage read out the citations about each person, detailing their
achivements to Canadian community, arts, society or science.  It
was impressive to be in a room filled with so many members of the Order
of Canada, many more seated around the room, sitting with students.

\
Applauding
and thanking the new Order of Canada recipients:  Canadian Club
president Dr. Jean Watters, keynote speaker Joy Kogawa, and Enzo
Guerriero, president of Celebrate Canada – photo Deb Martin.

The
event concluded with the Vancouver Bach Children's Chorus coming into
the room and performing the song “This is My Home” which had been
commissioned for Expo 86 and was featured at the Canada
Pavillion.  Seated nearby was Patrick Reid O.C. and a special
advisor for the Canadian Club, who had been Commissioner for Expo
86.  The song is beautiful, and I love the chorus, when the melody
goes “This is My Home…. O Canada.”  It did bring a tear to my
eye. 

What a wonderful event.  I am very glad to be
a member of the Canadian Club, and very pleased that I was able to
contribute to this very inspiring and impressive event.  Margaret
Gallagher did an outstanding job as MC.  Joy touched and inspired
people as keynote speaker.  Harry Aoki, thrilled people with his
harmonica performance.  I am so glad to be able to call each of
them my friend.

Joy Kogawa & Friends – Emotionally and Truthful
 
reading at Chapters on Robson, Saturday Feb 11

Authors Joy Kogawa,
Daphne Marlatt, Ellen Crowe-Swords, Heahter Skydt (TLC), Todd Wong
(Save Kogawa House) and Roy Miki at Chapters bookstore on Robson for
“Joy Kogawa & Friends.” – photo Deb Martin.

It was a surprisingly emotional and appreciative audience that thanked
each of the readers on Saturday Feb 11th at Chapters on Robson St.

Roy Miki started by reading segments from his book REDRESS: Inside the
Japanese Canadian Call for Justice.  Miki read passages that set
the tone and described how the government used language to euphemize
and downplay the confiscation of property, the massive uprooting and
tearing of social fabric, and the internment of Japanese Canadians,
labeled as “enemy aliens.”

Daphne Marlatt read from her book of poetry “Steveston”, a collection
of poetry about the Japanese Canadian community in of Steveston in
Richmond BC.  She verbally painted a picture of the community and
its loss.

Joy Kogawa shares a story with the audience while Daphne Marlatt and Roy Miki watch – photo Todd Wong

Ellen Crowe-Swords created a poignant moment when she set the time of
her story, as the 2nd week in December 1942.  She set a 6 year old
Joy Kogawa playing in her cherry Tree, herself as a week old baby,
Daphne Marlatt as new child immigrant to Canada, and Roy Miki as a
“twinkle in your father's eye” as Miki was born after internment while
his parents were relocated on a beet farm.

Joy herself, spoke about the challenges of the recent house
campaign and read from Emily Kato – a reworking of Itsuka.  She
commented that she rewrote Itsuka to try to make it a better book – but
unfortunately it has been very difficult to find.  This is
incredulous because of all the attention that Joy and her works have
been recieving with 2005's One Book One Vancouver program at the
Vancouver Public Library, Vancouver Opera's Naomi's Road touring
production, and now the Save Kogawa House campaign which has gone
national.

Joy Kogawa and Ellen Crowe-Swords listen attentively – photo Todd Wong

When questions from the audience arose, several people thanked the
readers and many had tears in their eyes because the talk and the
experience was so emotional releasing.  Joy had spoken about the
need to overcome the darkness and find the light in redress for both
Japanese Canadians and Chinese Canadians.  She had also read a
letter from a Japanese Canadian person who had grown up as an internee
housed in not a shack, or a stable, but a chicken coop – with fleas.

One Chinese Canadian woman said she had been involved in the CC redress
in Montreal, but hadn't been able to find a sense of community and
like-minded individuals in Vancouver.  She apologized for crying,
saying she didn't know how bad it was for the Japanese Canadians, as
people kept telling her that you cannot compare JC redress to CC
redress.  But while 62 years of legislated racism affected each
group differently (Roy Miki's book Redress points out that Canada had a
“gentleman's agreement” with Japan to limit emmigration from Japan to
Canada), Both were affected very much by the very strong anti-Asian
resentment in Canada at the time, which certainly resulted in the 1907
riots where the Anti-Asiatic League attacked both Chinatown and
Japantown.

Joy will next be giving the keynote talk at the “Order of Canada / Flag
Day” luncheon organized by The Canadian Club.  Feb 15, 2006 at the
Four Seasons Hotel.  This is a very prestigious event that
acknowledges BC's newest Order of Canada recipients.

Joy will give a public reading at the Vancouver Public Library on Feb
27th.  This is to be the Vancouver launch for her book Emily Kato
(reworked Itsuka) which follows Naomi's journey to Toronto to work with
Aunt Emily on the Japanese Canadian redress campaign.

The TLC display for “Save Kogawa House” campaign – photo Todd Wong

Joy Kogawa & Friends – reading at Chapters on Robson, Saturday Feb 11, 2-4pm

Joy Kogawa, Roy Miki, Daphne Marlatt and Ellen Crowe-Swords are reading
at Chapters Bookstore on 788 Robson Street in Downtown Vancouver.

This event is also sponsored by The Land Conservancy, www.conservancy.bc.ca who are helping to save the Kogawa House from demolition. 

Daphne Marlatt is a disinguished poet and currently writer-in-residence
for Simon Fraser University.  Roy Miki is a long time friend of
Joy, as well as being an English professor at SFU, and a leader in the
Japanese Canadian redress movement.  Ellen Crowe-Swords is also a
writer and healer, and a long time friend of Joy's.  Miki,
Crowe-Swords and Kogawa all grew up in the Japanese Canadian internment
camps, during WW2.

National Post – Rescuing Obasan's House
 
– interview with Joy Kogawa

VANCOUVER – There is nothing remarkable about the small wooden house, not at
first glance, aside from the fact it has somehow survived all these years.
Others around it have fallen, destroyed in the last decade by the wrecker's ball
and replaced with mundane, two-storey buildings sheathed in ubiquitous pink
stucco and smooth vinyl siding. McMansions.

The bungalow is 93 years old. It looks out of place in this increasingly
affluent and expensive neighbourhood called Marpole, located a few blocks from
the Fraser River's northern arm.

A modest house on West 64th Avenue, nestled behind a few gnarled, ancient
looking trees, its small yard delineated by a white picket fence. Now it too is
threatened. The present owner has no love for it. At the end of March, the house
is scheduled for demolition.

Unless.

There is a movement afoot to save the old house, which is not so ordinary,
after all. It is part of literary lore and a small but symbolic reminder of a
painful chapter in Canadian history. A reminder of things lost, including
innocence.

The celebrated poet and novelist Joy Kogawa spent the best of her youth in
the bungalow. She moved there with her family in 1937, when she was just two.
She learned to play the family piano inside the house's small living room. She
climbed the fruit trees in the backyard, swung from their branches, ate the
cherries and peaches.

Five years later, with war raging in distant Europe and in the Pacific,
21,000 Canadians of Japanese descent were forcibly removed from their homes,
under conditions set forth by the War Measures Act. They were declared enemies
of Canada. Their property was confiscated. They were placed in internment
camps.

Ms. Kogawa and her family were among those uprooted. They were sent to the
B.C. interior, to the rugged Slocan Valley, where life was brutal, cold,
unforgiving.

Their little Vancouver bungalow sat empty, and then others moved in. The
Kogawas yearned for it. Ms. Kogawa dreamed of it, many times. Ultimately, she
wrote about the little bungalow. It became Obasan's house.

Obasan is the title of Ms. Kogawa's famous autobiographical novel, published
in 1981 and reprinted many times, in multiple languages. The novel describes in
heartbreaking detail the Japanese-Canadian internment. The experience is
recalled by a character named Naomi Nakane and is based on the author.

In the novel, a wise aunt named Obasan raises Naomi. They lived in the little
bungalow on West 64th Avenue until the war. “It is more splendid than any house
I have lived in since,” Naomi remembers, in the novel.

“It does not bear remembering. None of this bears remembering.” It's too
painful.

Obasan won four major literary awards. Ms. Kogawa was propelled into the
limelight. In 1986, she was made a member of the Order of Canada. She went on to
receive seven honourary doctorates from Canadian universities. She published
more books, but none resonated more than Obasan.

Ms. Kogawa had already moved to Toronto, where she married, and raised two
children. But the house on West 64th Avenue stayed in her thoughts, and in her
dreams. “The longing for that house was forever,” she says now. “I always,
always wanted to come home. My mother, who had turned senile, also wanted to
come home. But it was impossible.” The house belonged to others.

She passed by a few times. In 1992, on a visit to Vancouver, she actually
knocked on the front door and stepped inside. The moment was bittersweet.

“Seeing the house reminds me of the sadness and the years when I wanted to go
back home so badly,” she told a Vancouver Sun reporter, who accompanied Ms.
Kogawa on her first visit home.

Ms. Kogawa began dividing her time between Toronto and suburban Vancouver.
Three years ago, she drove past the house on West 64th Avenue and saw a For Sale
sign in the front yard. She was exhilarated; the house, she imagined, might be
reclaimed. Then she learned the asking price: more than $500,000. Too much for
her to contemplate buying.

The house was sold. The new owner began making renovations that altered its
original character.

“She wanted no truck with me,” says Ms. Kogawa, who tried to intervene. “At
least she didn't pull it down, like all the other bungalows on the block.”

Last year, however, the owner changed her plans. She applied to the City of
Vancouver for a demolition permit. That's when the campaign to save the old
house went into full gear.

Led by friends, academics, fellow members of the CanLit community and the
Land Conservancy of B.C., a committee was formed to raise funds, buy out the
owner and restore the building to its original condition. The plan is to turn
the house into a writer's residence. Total cost of the project:
$1.25-million.

The owner is now willing to sell, should the money materialize. The city has
delayed approval of its demolition permit until March 30. Time is running out,
and Joy Kogawa is worried.

An omen: A cherry tree still stands in the backyard. It's a beautiful tree,
Ms. Kogawa says. A tree from her youth. It was severely pruned in 2004 and no
longer produces blossoms or fruit. It is dying. Ms. Kogawa managed to collect a
cutting. She planted it beside City Hall.

That may soon be all that's left of Obasan's house.

“The story is being written right now,” Ms. Kogawa says. “We don't know what
the ending will be. Will the house survive? Well, Obasan survived. So I wait,
and I watch.”

Joy
Kogawa will be doing a reading with friends such as Roy Miki, at
Chapters Book Store on Robson St., in downtown Vancouver – Feb 11,
Saturday 2pm to 4pm.