Salt Spring Japanese Garden Society

We are thrilled to announce that we have received funding for a project that will honour the history of the pre-war Japanese Canadian community on Salt Spring Island.
The Japanese Canadian Legacies Society (JCLS) is supporting the Japanese Garden Society of Salt Spring Island (JGS) with a grant for the project titled “Japanese Canadian Memorial Story Project”. The JCLS is able to support 29 projects in BC which will be completed by March 2027.

The project aims to celebrate the resilience of the pre-war Japanese Canadian community on Salt Spring Island and the Southern Gulf Islands and examine the enduring past to prevent history from repeating itself. An information kiosk with four interpretive panels will be installed in the well-loved Heiwa Garden. Additionally, another panel will be installed on the Lower Ganges Road footpath to bring to life the invisible legacy of Japanese-Canadian families who once lived in the area.

The creation of the Japanese Canadian Memorial Story Project on Salt Spring Island has received local support from CRD SSIPARC and Salt Spring Island Local Community Commission (LCC).

Background on the funding provided by JCLS:
Before, during and after World War II, 22,000 Japanese Canadians living in British Columbia were forcibly uprooted and permanently stripped of their homes, businesses, and belongings and relocated to internment camps outside the coastal BC area and displaced across the country, with some exiled to Japan. The majority of the uprooted Japanese Canadians were born in BC.

Overnight, lives were shattered and entire communities eradicated. Japanese Canadians trusted they would one day return to their homes. Instead, their properties and possessions were sold without their consent.

After the war ended in 1945, the majority of Japanese Canadians were prevented from returning to the coast. They were ordered to either move east of the Rockies or to war-torn Japan. When the community was allowed to return to the coast in 1949, it had nothing to return to.

The history of what happened to Japanese Canadian communities in BC is still relatively unknown.

In recognition of this history, the Japanese Canadian Legacies Society has created a BC Heritage Sites program. The purpose of the program is to assist local communities in promoting the legacies of Japanese Canadians in British Columbia through interpretive projects at sites of historical significance. These sites recognize a community who made important contributions to the building of this province, yet endured forced uprooting, incarceration, permanent dispossession, and displacement at the hands of the BC Government, resulting in the largest forced mass relocation in Canadian history.

This fund is intended to help make some of these now mostly invisible sites visible to new generations of British Columbians so that they may learn to appreciate the lasting legacies of Japanese Canadians in BC. Initiatives may include projects that promote memorialization, conservation and/or education of Japanese Canadian history tailored to a region within the province of British Columbia. These projects will have an enduring value.

Commemorating and celebrating our historic places—most of which remain under-recognized and underserved—is at the heart of the Japanese Canadian community’s work to rebuild connections to its heritage in British Columbia, and share this history and its lessons with all British Columbians.

 
The community talk/workshop series is funded by the Salt Spring Foundation.

Community Talk
June 23rd (Fri) at the Library’s Program Room
Open 6 pm for exhibition browsing (refreshments available)
The talk starts at 7 pm

Speaker: Kirsten Emiko McAllister, Ph.D., Professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University

Emiko McAllister will discuss the Japanese Canadian internment, dispossession, dispersal and the role of art in rebuilding the Japanese Canadian Community. She will also examine our responsibilities to Indigenous Nations and the other groups currently experiencing hardship and how the community’s larger pursuit of social justice urges us to look beyond our own experiences of persecution.   

The talk will offer an opportunity to acknowledge the painful memories of Japanese Canadians and the contentious history of British Columbia, allowing us to see the landscape in which we live with different eyes.

Together with The Suitcase Project by Kayla Isomura, the local Japanese Canadians’ history in photographs is also on display. The exhibition will be on until July 7th at the Library’s Program Room.

This year’s annual Blossom Picnic will be on Sunday, May 7th, from 11am at Heiwa Garden in Peace Park. We are co-hosting the event with the local Japanese community.

This festival highlight will feature a performance by Uminari Taiko, a Japanese Taiko drumming troop from Vancouver Island, as well as Japanese classical and pop music. The Salt Spring Literacy Project will also announce the Haiku Contest winners during the event.

There will be plenty of activities for the whole family, including a costume contest, a paper airplane flying contest, origami Ninja Star making, Ninja Star target shooting, Go Fish Yo-Yo water balloons, and Omikuji fortune slips.

For your lunch, we will prepare delicious home-style Inari sushi, Omusubi rice balls, and Okonomiyaki. We recommend pre-ordering Inari Sushi (4 pieces for $7) as they are usually sold out before noon. please email <heiwagardensaltspring@gmail.com> by May 6th at 3pm.

We also kindly request any baked goods donations. Please drop it off at the Blossom Picnic’s food table between 11 am and noon on May 7th.

Thank you so much and we look forward to seeing you all at Heiwa Garden.

Program
11:00 Opening music performance by Sarama and Noan
11:10 Opening speech
11:15 Music by the Roly Poly String Trio
11:25 Karate demonstration
12:00 Dress-up Contest
12:20 Music by Masa Ito on Shakuhachi Flute
12:40 Paper Airplane Contest
13:00 Music by Nami and Friends
13:20 Music by the Uminari Taiko
13:50 Join in and dance Bon Odori (Tanko Bushi)

*******************************************

September 18th from 5pm (until around 6:30pm)

The Heiwa Garden to inspire an improvised dance performance by Ontario dance duo: Suzanne Liska and Takako Segawa.

The Japanese Garden Society is very pleased to invite the community to join us at Heiwa Garden on Sunday, September 18th at 5:00pm for a special dance event featuring two accomplished dancers, Suzanne Liska and Takako Segawa.

We are fortunate to have Suzanne and Takako stopover on Salt Spring Island to dance following their participation in the 1st GEI Art Symposium of Japanese Canadian Artists in Victoria, BC. Suzanne is 3rd/4th and Takako is 1st generation Japanese.

The duo will perform an improvisational dance piece in response to and inspired by the Heiwa Garden in honour of the history of the island’s Japanese-Canadian pioneers. The duo will be accompanied by the sound of a shakuhachi played by Masa Ito from Vancouver. Suzanne will also guide an interactive movement weaving through the garden with members of the audience who wish to honour and experience the garden in a new way. Tetsu Aoyama will assist the sound for the performance.

The Heiwa Garden for peace and reconciliation was created by the Japanese Garden Society in 2009. It is to commemorate the island’s Japanese-Canadian pioneers and their internment and is located at the Peace Park across from Artspring in Ganges. 

Admission free. Everyone is welcome.

Dancers Bios

Suzanne Liska is a teacher, choreographer, dancer and researcher specializing in somatic practices, dance/theatre and contact and ensemble improvisation. Suzanne’s practices (contact and ensemble improvisation, dance-theatre, somatics, Taiko, and Butoh) are linked together through physical, collective, and cultural/social embodiment. Suzanne has choreographed and danced in works for CanAsian KickStart, DanceWorks CoWorks, Dusk Dances, and Dance Matters, receiving grants and awards through the Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, York University and SSHRC (Canadian Graduate Scholarship). 
Suzanne has a B.A., B.Education, and MFA in Choreography and is a Certified Alexander Technique Teacher. She teaches professional dancers, actors, community dancers, and high school and elementary school students; workshops across Canada, the USA and Japan; and workshops in Toronto for Randolph College, Ryerson University, George Brown College and Humber College. She is contract Faculty in York University’s Dance department and part-time faculty in George Brown College’s Acting and Digital Media department. Suzanne is a Japanese Canadian Sansei/ Yonsei. www.suzanneliska.com

Takako Segawa is contemporary dancer, choreographer, and performer. Born in Kochi,Japan, she trained in both traditional arts and contemporary Japanese movement styles. Takako graduated from Nippon Sports Science University, and is a certified professional dancer from the London Contemporary Dance School.
Takako’s 20 year career includes performances throughout Europe—in London, Italy, Slovenia, and Greece—and throughout Asia—in Indonesia, China, Singapore, Taiwan, and Japan. From 1999 to 2009, Takako produced Contemporary Dance Arts Vol.1-5 in Kochi and Fukuoka, Japan.
Now based in Canada, Takako has worked with Tedd Robinson, Corpus, JAMII, Maxine Heppner, Michael Coldwell, the Xing Ban Fu Ballet, Susan Lee, Suzanne Liska, Limitless productions, and others. She has received numerous grants to create and mount her works, including from Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, Ottawa Arts Funding, and the Kochi (Japan) Ministry of Performing Arts. Takako established her company, ‘Fluid Elements’ in 2015.

+++++++++++++

After a two-year hiatus the Blossom Picnic is back! Please join us to celebrate the best of spring in the beautiful Heiwa Garden on Sunday May 29th from 11am to 2pm. The Japanese community on Salt Spring Island is busy preparing fun activities and yummy foods for everyone to enjoy. 

For preorder inari sushi lunch $6: please call Mana at 250-653-0099.

+++++++++++++

Challenging Injustice: A conversation with human rights activists Keiko Mary Murakami-Kitagawa and Tosh Kitagawa

The Japanese Garden Society is hosting a conversation on Zoom with human rights activists, Mary and Tosh Kitagawa. This opportunity emerged while we were working on the series of forums on racism.

The recording of the conversation is now up on our website.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/701418588?h=990d2e004e

Date: April 13th (Wednesday) from 7pm to 8:30pm

Keiko Mary Murakami-Kitagawa and Tosh Kitagawa have spent decades as human rights activists in the Japanese-Canadian community and beyond.

Their zoom conversation with Rumiko Kanesaka, a long-term volunteer of the Japanese Garden Society, will range through history, their own family stories, and what empowers them to emerge from personal and collective trauma as strong community members.

Mary is the older sister of well-known Salt Spring Islanders Rose and Richard Murakami, and with them endured the wartime dispossession and removal of Japanese-Canadians from the island. The generation which experienced the Uprooting of Japanese Canadians from the Coast is vanishing and an opportunity to hear their first-hand story is becoming rare.  

Please join us for an evening with this inspiring couple who continue to devote their lives to challenging injustice. 

Online Conversation Series on Racism hosted by the Japanese Garden Society with assistance from the Salt Spring Foundation

“Conversations on Racism” is a series of free online conversations designed to explore the history of racism and colonialism on Salt Spring Island. We will hear from activists who have brought to light histories of injustice and who are challenging current manifestations of systemic racism. The first of three spring conversations will focus on stories about recovering silenced histories of Black settlers and Japanese Canadians (April), the second will be a conversation between three BIPOC activist women (May), and the third will focus on the experience of people of Asian heritage and those with mixed ethnic backgrounds on Salt Spring Island (June).

The series will continue in the fall. These conversations will support a wide understanding of racism in our community, then and now. They will offer inspiration through personal stories of the panelists, and provide examples and suggestions of how to challenge systemic racism.

Please click ‘Anti-Racism Forums‘ on the menu for more details.

This conversation series was made possible by a grant from the Salt Spring Foundation and donations from the JGS supporters. 

+++++++++++++

We are excited to announce that the Heiwa Garden Restoration Project was chosen as one of 68 recipients of the BC Heritage Infrastructure Funding. 

Heritage BC joins the Province of British Columbia in announcing the results of the single largest funding program to support B.C.’s unique heritage infrastructure.

“Through this funding program, the Province not only provided the
largest one-time infusion of funds into the heritage sector, but it also recognized the importance and potential of heritage infrastructure and its place in our province’s economic picture.” (Paul Gravett – BC Heritage)

Funding will soon flow throughout the province to support projects in 68 communities including Atlin in the northern reaches of the province to Fernie in the southeast corner and to Port Alberni on the western side of Vancouver Island. The projects will ensure that, as a province, we retain and celebrate many aspects of the British Columbia’s history and community life, from Chinese association buildings and Japanese internment camps to well-used town halls and an abandoned historic mine.

The Japanese Garden Society will utilize the fund to restore some of the main structures such as the ceremonial gate, interpretive panel, benches and pathways. 

The restoration work will begin in spring 2021. 

+++++++++++++

UVic Libraries has just published a book by local historian Brian Smallshaw: As if They Were the Enemy: The Dispossession of Japanese Canadians on Saltspring Island.

It’s a micro-history of the uprooting and dispossession of Japanese Canadians as it happened on Saltspring Island during World War Two, but also a study of the larger processes that led to the decision to liquidate the property of Japanese Canadians without their consent – as if they were the enemy.

Print copies are available for purchase on Saltspring for $20 (cash) or can be mail-ordered directly from the author for $26 for delivery anywhere in Canada. Contact Brian at b@pixelmap.ca for local pickup or for mail-order.

Electronic copies (PDF) of the book can be downloaded free from the UVic website, and print copies can also be ordered from their website for $24.95 plus taxes and shipping.
https://onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca/press/books/titles/asifenemy/

++++++++++