Vancouver Japanese Language School–Japanese Hall: Room 411

All Day Programming

My great-grandparents went from proudly owning a fruit and vegetable farm five-football-fields large in Richmond, BC, to the Canadian government forcing them for years to live impoverished in a shack, picking sugar beets for a pittance to pay for their incarceration in Taber, Alberta. Legalized racism ripped away my great-grandparents’ dreams for themselves and future generations. By taking the land, property, and wealth of Japanese Canadians and forcing them to live confined and in poverty, Canada purposefully broke Japanese Canadians communities. The intergenerational loss of cultural connection, language, wealth, and way of life are represented by the 100+ homes sitting on the land my great-grandparents once owned. 

Events: Artist Talks, Learn about the inspiration for this art installation and the Canadian government’s forced removal, dispossession, and incarceration of Japanese Canadians through the family history and stories researched by the artist. 

Artist Biography: Miki Dare (Dare is pronounced DAH-RAY in Japanese and means “who”) is a Japanese Canadian writer and artist who uses mixed media, from food packaging to fire to photography, to dig into our history’s roots and see how they impact personal identities and social realities today.