The Paueru Gai Dialogues #3

On Memory, Mythmaking and Community Resilience 

Date: March 27, 2021
Time: 1PM – 3PM PST / 4PM – 6PM EST
Free admission. Registration Required.

Link to register: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/the-paueru-gai-dialogues-3-tickets-143858989109

What, if anything, have we learned from our past? Are there ways we can harness this renewed sense of connection to heal a fractured community and open the future to new possibilities?

Guest host John Endo Greenaway will facilitate a discussion with panelists Bryce Kanbara, Sherri Kajiwara, and Michael Prior exploring their work and these questions.

The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns have us looking back at the 1940s internment, dispossession and dispersal of Japanese Canadians through a new lens, bringing up questions of community resilience and cultural values and how they may have been passed down through the generations.

Participants will be invited into breakout groups to share their perspectives with one another. To wrap up the event, everyone will reconvene to offer questions and debrief together.

We are grateful to Hapa Collaborative, SFU’s David Lam Centre, The Bulletin (JCCA), ElementIQ, The Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council and City of Vancouver for financial and in-kind support.

John Endo Greenaway is a self-described hapa-sansei who lives and works in the Metro Vancouver area. Born to a Japanese Canadian mother and an English/Irish Canadian father, he has spent the last sixty-plus years trying to figure out where he fits in. He will let you know when he does. In the meantime, he toils in the cultural mines as a graphic designer, taiko player/composer and as managing editor of The Bulletin, a journal of Japanese Canadian community, history and culture. In 2017 he co-authored the book Departures: the expulsion of the Japanese Canadians from the west coast 1942–1949, that he began many years ago with his mother, Fumiko Greenaway. The book reflects his current interest in the poetics of memory as it relates to the internment.

BRYCE KANBARA (born, educated, lives in Hamilton ON). Visual artist, curator/proprietor you me gallery (2003-present); Previous roles include: Founding member and first administrator, Hamilton Artists Inc.; Curatorial positions at Burlington Art Centre, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant, JCCC Gallery @ the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, Toronto; Executive director of the Toronto Chapter, National Association of Japanese Canadians; Chair of the NAJC Endowment Fund; National Executive Member, NAJC; Visual Arts, Crafts & Design Officer, Ontario Arts Council; Co-chair of the Board of Directors, Workers Arts & Heritage Centre; Governing Council member, Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion.

Sherri has been a fine arts professional for 20+yrs as a gallerist, director, writer, editor, publisher, and curator. A graduate of the UBC Sauder School of Business, Sherri co-owned the Bjornson Kajiwara Gallery, a contemporary visual art space, from 2004 – 2008. From 2009 she led an online arts communications company, Vantage Art Projects, to bridge the gap between artists, institutions, galleries, and art fans by creating parallel opportunities for creativity through satellite exhibitions and on-demand publications. Volunteerism includes the BC Museums Association council, Heritage Vancouver public art committee, and several Nikkei community committees. She is Past President of the Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver, and is a teacher and Past President of Three Jewels Vancouver (a yoga/meditation/dharma centre).

Michael Prior is a writer and teacher. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, The New Republic, Narrative Magazine, PN Review, Poetry Northwest, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, and elsewhere. He is a past winner of Magma Poetry’s Editors’ Prize, The Walrus’s Poetry Prize, Matrix Magazine’s Lit POP Award for Poetry, and is a 2021-22 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow. His first full-length book of poems, Model Disciple, (Véhicule Press), was published in 2016 and named one of the best books of the year by the CBC. Burning Province (McClelland & Stewart), his second book, was published in 2020. He holds graduate degrees from the University of Toronto and Cornell University.

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