Welcome to Historic Joy Kogawa House

Joy Kogawa gives March 30th reading for Alcuin Society at Kogawa House

Seventeen Alcuin Society members and their guests participated in the first of  a new series of members-only meetings on March 30th at the historic Joy Kogawa heritage house in Marpole.  

Kogawa House Committee member Ann-Marie Metten started the evening by explaining the series of successful steps that were taken to save the historic house from demolition.  Future plans are to return the house to its original condition and then to offer the house as a place of retreat for writers of conscience from around the world.

Richard Hopkins then spoke of Joy Kogawa’s considerable literary achievements in the areas of fiction, poetry and children’s literature.  Joy’s books were available for members to examine after the presentations.

The definite highlight of the evening, however, was a reading by Joy herself from her award winning novel Obasan.  The reading had particular resonance for the audience since Joy continuously referred to places mentioned in the novel that were right before the audience’s  eyes. 

After the reading she  spoke with incredible energy and passion about the Japanese internment during the Second World War and all of the hardship and suffering that that injustice caused so many Japanese families and the Japanese community in Canada as a whole. 

Fortunately some reparation for these wrongs have occurred in the form of  Federal Government redress and in the saving of the Kogawa house itself.  All of the audience members felt at the end of the evening that they had received a rare privilege in being able to hear  Joy read and speak  her own moving personal experience.

More Heritage recognition

for Joy Kogawa House

write ups in Vancouver Courier

and Journal of Commerce

Here are some articles about the Vancouver Heritage Awards. 

Fred Lee wrote in the Vancouver Courier
Urban Landscape

Here's the certificate.

Thanks to everyone who helped.

TLC and Save Joy Kogawa

House committee both

receive City of Vancouver

Heritage Award of Honour




It was a great night for the members of Save Kogawa House Committee and TLC: The Land Conservancy of BC.  We were all honoured with the City of Vancouver Heritage Awards of Honour. It was the last award presented following the multiple recipients for awards of recognition and awards of merit. TLC executive director Bill Turner and myself, for Save Kogawa House Committee, were tagged to give the aceptance speeches.

The awards were held at the beautiful and historic Coastal Church, at 1160 West Georgia St.  A reception was held from 5:30 to 7pm, and it was great to see and socialize with all the event's attendees.  I had a great chat with historian Jean Barman. City Councillor Peter Ladner congratulated me on a well-run Gung Haggis Fat Choy that he attended. Other City Councillors Heather Deal, George Chow and Suzanne Anton congratulated us on saving Kogawa House. Friends Kelly Ip, Howe Lee were there. Parks Commissioner Spencer Herbert gave me the latest update on his petition to name the new Vancouver park at Selkirk and 72nd, as David Suzuki Park.  Artist Raymond Chow and house genealogist James Johnstone were there. Dianne Switzer of the Vancouver Heritage Foundation waved to us.

The evening's emcee was Christopher Gaze, creator and director of Bard on the Beach. Gaze gave a summation of Vancouver's early arts and cultural history, accompanied by projected pictures. It started with the first piano arriving in 1851, and included great names and performances such as Nijinksky, Boris Karloff and Benny Goodman, as well as local luminaries such as Dal Richards and Jimmy Pattison. This "introduction" to the awards event finished with a musical performance by Destino, the four tenors "popera" group.

Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan came to the stage to welcome and thank all the nominees. Mayor Sullivan handed out the award certificates, after Gaze read descriptions of each of the award winning projects.

Here is the draft of the acceptance speech which I presented at the Vancouver Heritage Awards:

Joy Kogawa House committee

to receive Vancouver Heritage

Award of Honour


A young Joy Kogawa with brother Tim standing beside their childhood home in Marpole prior to 1942 - photo courtesy of Joy Kogawa

On February 19th, at Coastal Church, the City of Vancouver Heritage Awards will give the Heritage Award of Honour jointly to Joy Kogawa House Committee and The Land Conservancy of BC.

Joy Kogawa House was the childhood home of award winning author Joy Kogawa, which she was forced to leave in 1942, at age six, when Japanese-Canadians were "evacuated" from the BC Coast and sent to internment camps during World War 2.  The Canadian government subsequently confiscated all their remaining property and auctioned it off, supposedly to help pay for the cost of internment.

She and her mother always dreamed of returning to the house, but their family was sent to live in Alberta as part of the Japanese Canadian dispersal program, in an effort to keep Japanese Canadians from returning to the Coast, and trying to reclaim their confiscated property.

Obasan (1981), is the award winning book that is a fictional memoir about the internment of the Japanese-Canadians.  It is considered one of Canada's most important 100 books ever written according to the  Literary Review of Canada.  It is the second most studied book in Canadian schools and universities.

I am one of the committee members for the Joy Kogawa House committee along with Ann-Marie Metten, David Kogawa, Anton Wagner, Ellen Crowe-Swords, Richard Hopkins, Jen Kato, Joan Young and Sabina Harpe.  We have all put in incredible hours of volunteer work to help realize this project.

It was only 17 short months ago, when Ann-Marie Metten contacted me for help when she learned that a demolition inquiry for 1450 West 64th Ave. was being made.  In the months to come, we would be asked why it was important to save the childhood home of author Joy Kogawa.  We would also be told that there was little chance to save it.

The 3rd week of September 2005, was a roller coaster for Joy Kogawa.  She learned of the demolition plans in the same week that saw: 1) excerpts from the Naomi's Road opera performed at Vancouver Arts Awards; 2) she received the Community Builder's Award from Asian Canadian Writer's Workshop; and 3) the final event of One Book One Vancouver "Obasan" program where she gave a reading at Word On The Street book and magazine festival.

In December 2005, The Land Conservancy of BC stepped in to become a joint partner in our project to save the house.  They became the chief fundraiser and eventually purchased the house in full in May 2006.


Joy with Richmond elementary students who wanted to save Kogawa House - photo Joan Young

We are ecstatic and honoured to receive the Award of Honour, for projects demonstrating an outstanding contribution to heritage conservation.

Nominations were accepted for:

• Restoration, rehabilitation, adaptive re-use or continued maintenance of a heritage building, a significant interior of a heritage building, or characteristic features of a heritage building;
• Use of innovative engineering techniques or restoration/conservation methods in upgrading a heritage building which may include seismic upgrading;
• Preservation of a heritage landscape;
• Heritage advocacy of a group or individual in the preservation of a heritage site or increasing public awareness of heritage issues;
• Publication, education or exhibit that promotes heritage conservation;
• Efforts in community or neighbourhood revitalization.

Click here to see past Heritage Award winners

The Tyee: Michael Kluckner about the importance of Kogawa House 

and The Land Conservancy of BC

Michael Kluckner is a writer/painter and heritage advocate.  He has done 

wonderful things to promote the heritage of BC, documented in his book

and his works titled  Vanishing British Columbia.  In a recent article by 

Charles Campbell in The Tyee, Kluckner talks about the importance of 

Kogawa House and the wonderful work by The Land Conservancy of BC.

http://thetyee.ca/Photo/2006/12/08/VanishingBC/

On the virtue of taking individual heritage preservation initiatives out of government hands:

"One of the things I can take some credit for being involved in at the very beginning and suggesting it is the privatizing of the B.C. Heritage Trust and the creation of the Heritage Legacy Fund of B.C., which was given $5 million in seed money right in the darkest days of the Liberal government. I was the treasurer, until a few weeks ago.

"The Land Conservancy is one of the partners in the heritage legacy fund, and they're going out and doing things like this marvellous high-wire act with the Kogawa house [where Obasan author Joy Kogawa lived before the Second World War internment of Japanese-Canadians]. In a sense, they are showing how some public money, put into an endowment administered by a private foundation, with private fundraising, can really make a difference. You think of how significant the Kogawa house is as a site on the cultural map of Canada. They're able to save this in the hottest real estate market that Vancouver's ever seen.

"Politicians come and go, and they're focused on their term of office. Stewardship is a longer-term commitment. The National Trusts in Britain and Australia have never been governmental organizations. There are governmental organizations in England that perform really good roles, but I think the evidence is that governments, whether they are left or right, can't be counted on to have consistent policies that allow for stewardship.

"The grassroots desire to save the Kogawa house -- this is not something that was seen by the Liberal or Conservative governments federally as being important. But there were obviously people all over the country who said 'This is important.' The people are ahead of the government on that. A mechanism that allows this to happen is often much more flexible. The reality is that in Australia, England, Scotland, you get people's interests reflected through an organization more than you get people's values reflected through a government. Governments have other fish to fry.

"The city is somehow way more accessible to people. What's missing is the idea of heritage that is more holistic. Going back to the walk-up apartments on South Granville -- somehow these buildings have to be recognized holistically as being part of the city's future as much as they are a part of the past."

On British Columbia's two solitudes:

"But then you get out into the countryside, and you've got the two solitudes, the urban and the rural. In the city, most of the change is due to development. The city's rich, and it can make choices, and most of the time they are pretty good choices. But out in the countryside, change is due to abandonment, and there's no money. And so that layer of human settlement is just disappearing off the landscape, and I think the province is impoverished due to the loss of that layer.

"In terms of heritage planning and inventories, the province has actually been quite proactive at finding money. And now the energy's going into the so-called keynote buildings, because of the development of the national register of historic places. Planning to a certain degree works in communities that are organized. You see it in Kamloops and Kelowna to a certain extent, in terms of retaining these layers.

"But then there's these almost folkloric places. For example, Doukhobor community villages in the Kootenays. There are just a handful now instead of a hundred. This is the evidence of the largest communal living experiment ever in Canada, and fascinating from that point of view. You then get The Land Conservancy [of B.C.] coming in and helping to buy one of the key places. The land conservancies are one of the most positive of the initiatives that have come along, and they've come along privately. The TLC is just a remarkable organization. The Nature Conservancy of Canada is very good too. And they've gotten into cultural sites, as has the land conservancy."

 For more article see: http://thetyee.ca/Photo/2006/12/08/VanishingBC/

Joy Kogawa was invited to be part of an anthology collected and edited by Irvin Studin.

 What Is A Canadian? : Forty-Three Thought-Provoking Responses (Hardcover)
by Studin (Author)

In a year following the release of CBC TV's The Greatest Canadian" and CBC Radio's  "BC Almanac's Greatest British Columbians" there is a book titled: "What is a Canadian? 43 Thought -Provoking Responses.  Each of these essays begins with the words “A Canadian is . . .”. Each one is very different, producing a fascinating book for all thinking Canadians.

Here is Joy Kogawa's response...

For the other 42 responses including ones by Alan Fotheringham, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Roch Carrier, Jake MacDonald, George Elliott Clarke, Margaret MacMillan, Thomas Franck, Rosemarie Kuptana, Gérald A. Beaudoin, Peter W. Hogg, George Bowering, Christian Dufour, Paul Heinbecker, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, John C. Crosbie, Audrey McLaughlin, Roy MacGregor, Charlotte Gray, Hugh Segal, Janet McNaughton, Sujit Choudhry, Aritha van Herk, L. Yves Fortier, Catherine Ford, Mark Kingwell, Silver Donald Cameron, Guy Laforest, Maria Tippett, E. Kent Stetson, Louis Balthazar, Joy Kogawa, Wade MacLaughlan, Douglas Glover, Lorna Marsden, Saeed Rahnema, Denis Stairs, Valerie Haig-Brown, Guy Saint-Pierre, William Watson, Doreen Barrie, Jennifer Welsh, Bob Rae - you will have to go buy the book!

What is a Canadian? 

Joy Kogawa

A Canadian is a transplanted snail called James who sat down on a brick.  A Canadian is a big fat street party on the Danforth in Toronto, 2004.  A Canadian is hockey night in Canada on a small patch of ice created by buckets of water in the backyard.  A Canadian is a plane full of people from Vancouver flying to Quebec with signs saying:  “WE LOVE YOU.”  A Canadian is the wind on the prairies that who has seen.  And a red-headed girl in a green-gabled house on an island with red soil.  And the Mounties who always always get their man.  A Canadian trusts the law.  And since we generally rank either second or third or fourth or whatever, we try harder.  But weren’t we proud when Gorbachev said, “Look at Canada. They don’t kill people there.”  Or something like that.  That’s because a Canadian is, if nothing else, decent.  Isn’t that the adjective that most commonly comes to mind?  We’re as decent as the day is long, are we not--fair-minded, peaceable, not demanding guns to defend ourselves, abhorring and resisting the culture of violence we are virtually force-fed by the fee-fi-fo-fuming giant close by.  My Canadian friends who travel a lot say we don’t know how lucky we are.  I think a lot of us do know it.  I, for one, am a Canadian who loves Canada more than words can say.

My love is not cheap.  It’s been tested, and it endures.  I can thank my parents for this.  And I can thank the community from which I came, and which was destroyed by the particular brand of racism in my childhood.  I can thank my Grade Two Highroads to Reading that I practically memorized when we were living in that once-upon-a-time space called Slocan (British Columbia).  Books were precious and few.  I can thank the CBC that I listened to when we were finally allowed to have radios again, after we were moved east of the Rockies. That’s when a Canadian became the Green Hornet, the House on the Hill, Share the Wealth, Terry and the Pirates and Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster and Rawhide, and that beautiful blonde skater, Barbara Ann Scott.  Other Canadians from my community who were exiled missed out on all that.  A Canadian is a group of more than four thousand people who were exiled for no crime.  Oh sweet democratic country that I love. Some people are tired of this drum-beat.

At some point our flag stopped being bold red, white and blue intersecting slashes, and became a red pointy leaf on white, with two red bands.  At some point we stopped singing “The Maple Leaf Forever”, because Wolfe the dauntless hero was being impolite planting Britannia’s flag on Canada’s fair domain.  In Coaldale, Miss McVeety tried to teach us French, but it was a hard row to hoe.  I don’t think she actually spoke French.  She assigned us things to memorize from a textbook.  “Mercy buck-ups,” the kids said.  We all soldiered on.  Mr. Connors and Mr. Bryant taught us about the crazy kings and queens of England, but we didn’t learn about Canadian history.  A Canadian is someone who probably doesn’t know much about Canada.

There was a year of patriotic pride when we sang with great gusto, “It’s the hundredth anniversary of CON fed er a tion.”  And there was no cloudy doubt in the clear blue air that Canada would last as long as the planet did.  There was also no doubt that everyone in Canada was white, including me.  My parents were another matter.  I couldn’t really whiten them.

Years later, I discovered that I wasn’t completely white, and for that I received an Order of Canada.  One of the most memorable moments of that day occurred when a fellow recipient who was sitting beside me leaned over to make small talk as we waited for the ceremony to begin.  “I have been to your beautiful country,” he said.  I was so Canadian and polite and smiled and nodded.  He went on to tell me things about my country--Japan--and I kept nodding.  He was French Canadian.  I don’t know what his name was, but if we were arranged alphabetically, maybe his name started with K. Anyway, as I say, a Canadian is someone who probably doesn’t know much about Canada, including who a Canadian is.

About a year ago, I was visiting Thorold, a small town near St. Catherines, Ontario, when my son introduced me to one of his acquaintances, who looked to be about thirty years old.  He glanced down at this old white-haired Asian foreigner from his not-so-great height and said, “Does she speak English?”  I ought not to have been surprised.  It wasn’t so long ago that only white people were Canadians.  I was a bit put-off, but answered politely, “Yes, I speak English,” and left it at that.  A Canadian is a foreigner who isn’t a foreigner.

A few miles away in the most multicultural city in the world, every subway ride is a trip through the United Nations.  I suppose it’s our role, as Torontonians, to trumpet the news that humans from all over the world can, generally speaking, live together in peace. It’s one of the things that makes me happy about this country.  Our ancestors might have fought each other, but we don’t have to.

In my untypical Canadian childhood, because I was related to the country of my ancestors, I was “a stench in the nostrils of the people of Canada.”  Today, another Canadian child goes through that wringer, running home from school with her books clutched tight to her chest, and after supper she’s fighting with her parents about what she will or will not wear on her head.  And somewhere in a high-rise elevator, a gentle Canadian boy is aware that, even though he is no longer wearing his turban, the old woman has moved aside anxiously.  All these little moments of life are the mirrors that tell us who we are.

These days, I’m more worried about the children on the streets, in temporary shelters, in transitional housing--the children who are living on the hungry side of life in a world-wide apartheid, where the dividing line is as black and white as the rich and the poor.  The mindset to be dismantled is the powerful faith that money is everything.  In its name and for its sake, we are giving our all, sacrificing our lives, our peace, our children and our neighbours as ourselves.  Like others all over the planet, we are drifting in the miasma of a dream of riches that has turned murky.  Is there, as Jane Jacob’s book title says, a ‘Dark Age Ahead?’  Does our country have the kind of enlightened citizenry and moral leadership to guide us through the nightmare of greed?

There was one among us who died recently--a man who helped to shine the light of hope into the darkness of injustice and apartheid in South Africa.  Ted Scott, the former primate of the Anglican Church was, as the title of his biography states, a man of  “Radical Compassion.”  Joe Clark called him, “an almost perfect representation of Canada.”

I was sitting behind a pillar during Ted Scott’s memorial service, leaning this way and that, trying to get a glimpse of Desmond Tutu, who was in the pulpit at St. James’ Cathedral.  He spoke warmly about Ted Scott, about the gratitude of South Africans.  At one point, I could see his left hand as he stretched out his arms and repeated the word “all.”  “All – all – all.  Arafat.  Sadam Hussein.  All.  All.  All.  All.”  He was including every single person on the globe in the human family--the blacks, the whites, the aboriginals, the old, the rich, the despised, the admired, the tyrant, the remorseless psychopath.  All.  All.  All.

And so a Canadian is part of the All that includes our Ted Scotts and our Paul Bernardos, our Conrad Blacks and our neighbours sleeping and dying on the streets.

These days I am working with some of the neighbours in my corner of the world, in Toronto’s Old Town surrounding the St. Lawrence Market.  We are trying to demonstrate, through the work of a community currency, the Toronto Dollar, that the power of caring is still alive, and that we can work together to make a difference.  We are trying to connect the streets and the towers, trying to bridge the horrible gap between rich and poor.  It’s a hard row to hoe, as hard as trying to learn a language from a textbook.  But we do what we can.   

Nelson Mandela says he comes from a culture of ‘ubuntu’, a philosophy based on belonging where the essential identity of a person is based not on “I think therefore I am,” but on “I am because we belong.”  The enemy, then, is not someone to destroy, but someone to embrace.

I think Canada is closer to a culture of ‘ubuntu’ than many other countries.  Je suis. Nous sommes.  Where we fail, I’m thankful that mercy bucks us up.

VANCOUVER OPERA

NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 6, 2006                                         

Media Contact: Doug Tuck, Vancouver Opera 604-331-4823

dtuck@vancouveropera.ca

Vancouver Opera presents

at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa

its acclaimed opera for young audiences

Naomi’s Road

A touching drama of family, home, and cross-cultural understanding

Vancouver, BC ~ After inspiring nearly 50,000 children in schools and community venues throughout British Columbia , in southern Alberta , and in Washington State , Vancouver Opera’s acclaimed opera for young audiences and their families, Naomi’s Road, continues to resonate in profound ways.  From November 1 through 12, 2006, Vancouver Opera, in partnership with the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa , will present twenty performances of this very moving opera at the museum.

About the Opera

Commissioned by Vancouver Opera, Naomi’s Road was composed by Ramona Luengen to a libretto by Ann Hodges and is based on the 1986 novel for young readers by award-winning Japanese Canadian writer Joy Kogawa. Set during World War II, the opera depicts the dramatic journey of nine-year-old Naomi, her older brother Stephen, and their “Obasan” (aunt) from their comfortable and happy home in Vancouver to a Japanese internment camp in the interior of B.C.  Sister and brother endure the harshness of war, racism, bullying, and loss of family to discover the gifts that sustain them: music, words and love.  Their resilience of spirit and the kindness of certain strangers they meet offer hope for the future and will lead Canadian War Museum audiences to discover the power of understanding and the beauty of compassion.

In announcing these performances, James W. Wright, VO’s General Director, said, “This meaningful work deeply touched many people, children and adults alike, during its tour of B.C. and in locations in Alberta and Washington State that hold their own unique memories of the Japanese internment.  We are delighted by the opportunity to share this opera with young audiences in Ottawa , within the resonant surroundings of the Canadian War Museum .”  Added Wright, “I believe that this presentation of Naomi’s Road comes at a time in history when it is important to reflect on the ways in which war and its by-products can not only affect the future of nations but also forever alter the lives of children and the security of their families.  Vancouver Opera is privileged to stage a production that has the unique ability to act as a catalyst for audiences of all ages to enter into important dialogue on these issues.”

Performance Details / Tickets

November 1-3: School performances (not open to the public) 

November 4 and 5: public performances 1:00 pm and 3:00 pm each day

November 7-10: school performances (not open to the public)

November 11 and 12: public performance each day at 2:00 pm

Tickets to the public performances are now available from the Canadian War Museum ’s call centre at 1-800-555-5621 or 819-776-7014. Tickets may also be purchased in person at the Canadian War Museum box office.  Prices are $10 for students, and $20 for adults, plus any applicable service charges.  Schools can purchase group tickets by calling 1-800-555-5621 or 819-776-7014.

About Joy Kogawa

Joy Kogawa’s novel Naomi’s Road is based on her 1981 award-winning adult book Obasan, the first novel to deal with the internment of Japanese Canadians during and after World War II.  Widely admired and read, Obasan was chosen for the Vancouver Public Library’s 2005 city-wide annual book club program, One Book One Vancouver.  Joy Kogawa was born in Vancouver in 1935. Like Naomi’s family in the novel, Joy’s family was interned in Slocan and later sent to Coaldale , Alberta after World War II, where Joy taught school. Kogawa, who now lives in Toronto and Vancouver , is a recipient of numerous honorary doctorates as well as national and international awards for her writing.  In 1986, she was named a Member of the Order of Canada .  “When I first heard that Naomi's Road was being made into an opera for children, I had a sense of unreality,” she said.  “I couldn't quite fathom it.  And even today, knowing that somehow, through some mysterious process, the story has been magically transformed into a wholly different and wonderful medium, I still find it hard to believe and am left somewhat stunned.  It's more than a dream come true.”  Adds Kogawa, “The existence of this opera tells me once again that the unexpected is what happens -- and that there are more blessings in the air than we can ask for or imagine.  May we each walk on our own special roads – like Naomi and [her new kindred spirit] Mitzi – with Friendship, discovering as we go that our world is full of a loveliness that is greater than all the grief in our lives.”

The Creation Process

Vancouver Opera awarded he commission for Naomi’s Road in the fall of 2003 and the process of writing and composing began.  Ann Hodges penned the libretto in the winter of 2003/2004.  Composer Ramona Luengen wrote the last notes of her score in September, 2004.  That same month, the libretto was read at a special event at the Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historical Site , in Steveston, B.C., (located at the site of the seizure, in 1942, of hundreds of fishing boats owned by Japanese Canadians). 

Two week-long workshops were conducted, one in the fall of 2004 and the other in the spring of 2005, during which the work was developed and refined.  In May, 2005, portions of the opera were sung for an international audience at the annual OPERA America conference, in Detroit .  And in early June, 2005, selections from the opera were performed at the 2005 UBC-Laurier Institution Multiculturalism Lecture, at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, in Vancouver .  The performance and the lecture, by poet and writer Roy Miki, were later broadcast on the CBC Radio program IDEAS.

During 2005-2006, Vancouver Opera’s touring production of Naomi’s Road visited more than 140 schools and community venues throughout B.C.  The experience of seeing and hearing Naomi’s Road was enhanced with study materials that were created and provided by Vancouver Opera to each school in advance of the performance.  The production also traveled to Lethbridge , Alberta and to Seattle and Bainbridge Island , Washington .  It was enthusiastically received wherever it was performed.

Production Details

The production features original sets and costumes, designed by Christine Reimer, which beautifully evoke the 1940s period of the opera’s story and have been cleverly engineered to fold up for touring purposes.  Stage direction is by Ann Hodges.

The musical score, for piano accompaniment and four singers, is richly melodic and dramatic.  Easily enjoyed by young audiences, the music is also deft and sophisticated enough to be appreciated by adult audiences.  It incorporates traditional Japanese melody and its beautiful voicings and harmonies are influenced by Ramona Luengen’s experience as a composer of choral music.  The Musical Director is Leslie Uyeda. 

Cast

This production reunites the four young singers and the nimble-fingered pianist from the Spring 2006 segment of the 2005-2006 tour.  Soprano Jessica Cheung is Naomi; soprano Gina Oh is Mother, Obasan and Mitzi (a non-Japanese girl whom Naomi befriends); tenor Sam Chung is Stephen; and baritone Gene Wu is Father, the Trainmaster, a bully, and Rough Lock Bill (an eccentric but kindly man who lives in the mountains above the internment camp).  The pianist is Angus Kellett. The stage manager is David Curtis.

Support

Naomi’s Road was commissioned and produced by Vancouver Opera with the support of Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, Opera.ca, Vancouver Foundation, RBC Foundation, Vancouver Arts Awards, The Hamber Foundation, The Leon and Thea Koerner Foundation, and the Spirit of BC Arts Fund.

This presentation at the Canadian war Museum is made possible with the generous support of Ms. Yoshiko Karasawa.

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