VJLS – Japanese Hall On display all day/終日展示 The Japanese Canadian Hastings Park Interpretive Centre, at the northeast corner of the Livestock Building, is housed in one of the last intact structures where dispossessed Japanese Canadians were detained, born, or died, leaving trauma that affected generations. Phase 1 exterior construction is complete: 15 pillars name … Read more
VJLS – Japanese Hall On display all day/終日展示 At the Powell Street Festival, the Consulate General of Japan’s booth offers travel brochures, information on exchange programs, and cultural displays to promote relations between Japan and Canada. Visitors can explore tourism pamphlets, flyers, and magazines about Japan, as well as information on the Japan Exchange & … Read more
Vancouver Japanese Language School–Japanese Hall: Room 408 All Day Programming Undertow / 潜流 – August 1/2 2026 explores the quiet forces that shape memory, intuition, environment and family lineage. The installation brings together Nishikawara’s recent works including family images suspended as Cyanotypes on silk, Takuhon (stone rubbings) from ancestral gravestones in Japan, Gyotaku (fish prints), and Tenugui textiles created using de-commissioned fishing nets, seaweed, and plant materials. … Read more
Vancouver Japanese Language School-Japanese Hall: Room #412 Generations of Assimilation Generations of Assimilation” is an art installation made by Japanese Canadian Artist Stephanie Takagi. After the internment of Japanese Canadians during WWII the expectation was assimilation. This art installation is an attempt to bring honest discussion of what that assimilation has cost Japanese Canadians. Stephanie … Read more
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 … Read more
Vancouver Japanese Language School-Japanese Hall: Room #414 All Day Programming Inspired by Japanese wind phones, this interactive phone booth and mailbox installation is a portal for reflection and remembrance. Make a symbolic call, “send” a postcard, or write names and messages to past loved ones and ancestors. Explore the spoken and unspoken, leave an offering in a way … Read more
Vancouver Japanese Language School-Japanese Hall: Room #413 All Day Programming Inspired by Kome Nagasaki’s Momiji residence, Kome’s Room is a place where the door is always unlocked, and you are always welcome. In this intergenerational space for grounding, connecting, and recharging, you are invited to slow down, pause, and just be together. Sit and relax, … Read more
Vancouver Japanese Language School-Japanese Hall: 4th Floor Homing Pidgin is a tongue-in-cheek riff off of the bird called a Homing Pidgeon, referring to the bird’s ability to always return home, even if released at night, in a foreign place hundreds of miles away from its roost. Homing Pidgin also refers to the unique hybrid language developed by the … Read more
Vancouver Japanese Language School-Japanese Hall: 4th Floor A reading from and author conversation about The Breakwater, a multigenerational novel about the long shadow of an unspeakable family secret, culminating in an overdue reunion between two rivalrous brothers of Japanese Canadian heritage. Inspired by Shimotakahara’s family history, it has been praised by Kerri Sakamoto as a … Read more
Vancouver Japanese Language School-Japanese Hall: 4th Floor This book was realized from the authors bi-monthly posts in the Japanese Canandian Facebook Group throughout 2022. Miyagawa’s goal is to inspire sansei, yonsei, and gosei generations by sharing her experience in BC internment camps between 1942-49. About the Author: Harriet Haruye Miyagawa is a nisei survivor of internment of Japanese Canadians 1942-1952. Born in Port Hammond BC in 1938, after internment she … Read more
Vancouver Japanese Language School-Japanese Hall: 4th Floor How much history can twenty-six letters hold? This session explores the making of The Japanese Canadian Book of ABCs. Over eight months of debate, a children’s book became something larger: a way to carry Japanese Canadian history, advocacy, and community-building across generations. We will share how letters came to … Read more
Vancouver Japanese Language School-Japanese Hall: 3rd Floor Little Temple on the Prairie: A History of the Manitoba Buddhist Temple is a non-fiction book honouring the Winnipeg temple’s extraordinary 80-year history. Told through archival research and oral histories with temple members, survivors, and descendants of founders, LTOTP preserves the temple’s legacy as a pillar of faith, culture, and resilience. … Read more
Vancouver Japanese Language School-Japanese Hall: 3rd Floor The presentation will shine a spotlight on the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre’s Tomoshibi (“Lighting the Way”) five-day tour of sites of internment. The impact of the tour was immense, with the presenter feeling liberated from the “Sansei guilt” of not learning about her parents’ wartime experiences while they were still … Read more
Vancouver Japanese Language School-Japanese Hall: 3rd Floor Senda Kinoshita Nikkei Histories is a family history book completed through the JCLS intergenerational wellness fund by Christopher Takashi Robertson and members of his family. Containing over 300 pages of first-person interviews, photos, documents and research into the struggle and successes of two Japanese families arriving in Canada 125 years … Read more
Vancouver Japanese Language School-Japanese Hall: 3rd Floor North Pacific Cannery Museum is the last remaining Cannery village in British Columbia. Japanese Canadians played an important role in fishing and boat building in the history of the canneries. The project restored two triplexes built in North Pacific Cannery to encourage Japanese Canadians to return to the coast after internment and relocation … Read more
The tragic avalanche that occurred at the Rogers Pass summit in March of 1910 remains Canada’s deadliest. 58 railway workers, the majority Japanese Canadian, lost their lives while attempting to clear a snow slide from the tracks when another larger avalanche struck from the other side in the middle of the dark night. This documentary project also delves into … Read more
A poignant documentary that follows Japanese Canadian filmmaker Tamiko Potts as they uncover a buried chapter of their family’s past — the internment of over 22,000 Japanese Canadians during World War II. Along this emotional journey, Tamiko partners with trauma therapist Natascha Lawrence, whose insights help illuminate the profound intergenerational effects of displacement and silence. … Read more
Vancouver Japanese Language School–Japanese Hall: Room 410 All Day Screening A moving and intimate film, which draws on the stories of hardships, sacrifices, friendships and life changes recounted by some of the participants of the 2025 Japanese Canadian Sugar Beet Wellness bus tour of the sugar beet fields of Southern Alberta. A new and very … Read more
Vancouver Japanese Language School–Japanese Hall: Room 410 All Day Screening This 28-minute film, played on continuous loop, takes a brief look into Japanese Canadian history, roots of Powell Street Festival, and the Salmon Barbecue booth as a piece of the Redress history. The ethics of community care are at the essence. The Powell Street Salmon Barbecue … Read more
Vancouver Japanese Language School–Japanese Hall: Room 409 All Day Programming Emiko Morita and Tomas Herrera, 2026 This compilation captures fifty years of Powell Street Festival through images from community group archives, festival volunteer photographers and Inter-Cultural Action Society (ICAS). Speakers: Mas Ito, Jon Nakane, Minoru Yamamoto, Linda Uyehara Hoffman, Frederico Ron Gordo, E. Kage, Walter Quan, Atsuko … Read more
Vancouver Japanese Language School–Japanese Hall: Room 409 All Day Programming Emiko Morita and Tomas Herrera, 2026 This compilation captures fifty years of Powell Street Festival through images from community group archives, festival volunteer photographers and Inter-Cultural Action Society (ICAS). Speakers: Mas Ito, Jon Nakane, Minoru Yamamoto, Linda Uyehara Hoffman, Frederico Ron Gordo, E. Kage, Walter Quan, Atsuko … Read more
