Welcome to Historic Joy Kogawa House

Dream Vancouver:
Diversity in our History and our Future

When my great-great grandfather Rev. Chan Yu Tan came to BC in 1896, the roads were dirt, and there was a head tax on Chinese immigrants.

When I grew up in the 1960’s and 1970’s I marveled at the way Hawaiian culture was so ethnically diverse.  Asian faces were on nightly news casts, and Hawaiian culture was embraced by mainstream American culture.  In Vancouver, there was still a sense of racial divisions, and ethnic marginalization.  Chinese-Canadian and First Nations history were more likely relegated to sidebar stories and foot notes.

Today, I am living my dream of making Vancouver and Canada more racially tolerant and interculturally exciting!

Every culture that lived along the Silk Road from Italy to Japan, from India to Egypt now lives in Vancouver.  Through the cross-fertilization of ideas, we are able to express new ways of seeing ideas and expressing customs, of expressing the same oneness through many perspectives of the kaleidoscope of life.  But so many times we talk about Canada as a mosaic or multicultural, and become more concerned with the pieces while we lose sight of the whole.

Vancouver IS an inter-cultural crossroad and we are inter-historic… linking not only Vancouver’s history with each new wave of immigrants – but also with our collective global history.  We carry within us the global cultural history of the world… in our little city on the edge.

Vancouver must become a 21st Century Renaissance City.  The “Gateway to the Pacific” is gone with the passage of steam ships… we are now in the computer internet information era.  Everything is instant – within hours… minutes… seconds.  We know what is happening around the world.    Vancouverites can live here and work all around the world.

We must NOT be afraid of doing something new or borrowing from a different culture, nor to place an idea within a different context.  Creative synthesis takes what already exists and applies it to different scenarios – new and exciting.

This is the simple beauty of Gung Haggis Fat Choy.  How would a Robbie Burns Day be celebrated by Chinese-Canadians?  How would a Chinese New Year be celebrated by Scottish-Canadians?

What if…  Canadians had both Chinese and Scottish ancestry?  What if we celebrated both Robbie Burns Day and Chinese New Year on the same day… with the same families?

This is the future of Vancouver.  We are already acknowledged as the Canadian city with the most intercultural marriages.  

We are all one family.

I see a day for Vancouver when every family will have a member whose ancestry: paid the Chinese head tax; was an indentured Scottish labourer after the Highland clearings; was a French-Canadian settler; is First Nations; left Iran after the Shah was deposed; was in the Japanese-Canadian internment camps during WW2; or fished in the Maritimes; or worked oil fields in Alberta; and is addicted to dragon boat racing.

We MUST know our history to build our future.  How did we come to be here?  Who built and shaped this city?

People told us it was impossible, when we embarked on our campaign to save author Joy Kogawa’s childhood home from demolition.  But in our success we helped to build a corner stone foundation for our future Vancouver.  It gave Vancouver its first literary landmark for a Canadian writer.  It gave Vancouver a landmark from a dark period of its history when Canadians, born of Japanese ancestry were rounded up and sent off to internment camps in the mountains, and their property was confiscated… for no reason other than fear.  

Kogawa House can link history, literature, the arts, social-criticism, heritage, and multiculturalism all together.  By building understandings for our cultural history, through the arts, business, and even recreation sports like dragon boat racing, we can give value to our history… and to our future.

We need to educate and mentor our future leaders.  Our city, our societies and our education must embrace the continued diversity of our cultures. We must build inter-disciplinary social-cultural philosophical infrastructures throughout business, society, arts, politics, academia, sports and recreation.  There is no separation between business and art, between sports and history, between academia and recreation.  All is related, and everything is possible.  This is my Vancouver.

Todd Wong

 

Joy Kogawa's dream statement to be posted soon.

 

 

Google Alert for: kogawa house - September 14

in the city UPCOMING EVENTS inthecity@westender.com

Vancouver Westender - BC, Canada
... Homecoming: The Save Kogawa House Committee and the Land Conservancy host a fundraiser and the first public tour of the Joy Kogawa House (1450 W. 64th) on ...

Joy of history
Georgia Straight - Vancouver,British Columbia,Canada
... racial discrimination. The open house happens on Sunday afternoon (September 17), with Kogawa herself in attendance to sign books.

TLC/Save Kogawa House press conference presentations yesterday morning at 10:30am

At the head table were Joy Kogawa, Bill Turner (The Land Conservancy), Ann-Marie Metten (Save Kogawa House committee), Diane Switzer (Vancouver Heritage Foundation), Susan Bissonette (Heritage Vancouver), and Suzanne Anton Vancouver City Councillor.

Moderating was Tamsin Baker of the TLC who introduced each person.

Bill Turner spoke about the importance of Kogawa House, and how pleased the TLC was to be involved in this project.  He complimented the Save Kogawa House Committee for developing the national awareness and initiating the campaign to save the house.

It was a very moving talk by Joy Kogawa.  She always manages to push those emotional buttons.  From the start Joy was so HAPPY, she kept wiping the tears in her eyes.  Joy said that for many years she dreamed about coming back to the house that she knew as "home".  It stayed constant in her years as a child growing up in internment, then later on the sugar beet farms, and as they moved from place to place.  She said "But now, it's really happening!  Even if the house isn't saved, I am home now.  It's the here and now that is important, and it's happening now!"

I will ask them for their notes to post on www.kogawahouse.com
Q&A period followed.

Media attending was: CTV camera person,  City TV Breakfast.  Winnie for a Chinese newspaper.... 

A CTV camera took shots of me holding open the book Almanac's Greatest British Columbians - as I opened to the pages of BC's Greatest writers and the article on Joy Kogawa.  I kept showing people and saying "Joy hasn't even seen this book yet!"  I then showed my copy to Joy - and she of course was amazed.  I later gave my library copy to Joy to take home to show her daughter and grandchildren.

I will write more later....

TLC will be planning some MAJOR fundraisers coming up - Meetins will start on Monday with Save Kogawa House committee.

TLC Joins Community Efforts to Save Joy Kogawa's Childhood Home

 

December 2, 2005

VANCOUVER, BC – Community efforts to save Joy Kogawa’s childhood home from the wrecking ball moved into a new phase today as The Land Conservancy of British Columbia (TLC) has agreed to lead the campaign to acquire the house and secure its protection.

"The Kogawa house is a very important part of British Columbia’s heritage," said TLC’s Executive Director Bill Turner, "and we are determined to see it protected.  As of today, we have only 118 days to raise the funds needed to achieve this.  We will need to raise $1.25 million to ensure the future of this site, and we’ll be getting to work immediately."

The Kogawa house is located in the Marpole neighbourhood of Vancouver, and was the childhood home of noted Canadian author Joy Kogawa.  She and her family were removed from the home in 1942 as part of the Government’s policy of internment of Canadians of Japanese ancestry during World War II." Kogawa’s celebrated novel Obasan is a powerful and heart-rending story of that internment and features the house prominently as part of her childhood recollections.  It has been listed by the Literary Review of Canada as one of the 100 most important Canadian books ever written.

Inspired by the Save Kogawa House Committee, many community groups such as the Vancouver Heritage Foundation, Heritage Vancouver and the Vancouver Alliance for Arts and Culture and other cultural organizations like the Writers’ Union of Canada and the Federation of BC Writers have come together to support the protection of Kogawa House.  On November 3 they were able to convince the City of Vancouver to delay a demolition permit on the house for 120 days (effective November 30) to give the community time to raise the funds to buy it.  This followed the symbolic planting at City Hall of a graft from the cherry tree at Kogawa House, as Mayor Larry Campbell proclaimed Obasan Cherry Tree Day on November 1.

"I am so touched by the way the community has rallied to protect this house that holds such symbolic importance for me – and for so many others," said Joy Kogawa.  "I just wonder when I'm going to wake up from this dream of miracles."

Committee spokesperson Ann-Marie Metten said "We are delighted that The Land Conservancy is taking on this project.  As British Columbia’s National Trust they have the expertise to know what needs to be done and the ability to do it.  They have a great record of success in similar projects around the Province and we all believe that by working together we will be successful here too."

TLC’s Turner said that the fundraising campaign is underway.  "We are calling on everyone who has been moved by Joy Kogawa’s writing to contribute to saving the house.  Your contribution will not only recognize and honour Joy’s accomplishments but will also provide the opportunity for a writers-in-residence program that will enable a new generation of writers to be inspired by her work.  We are also calling on everyone who has been touched by Canada’s past treatment of communities such as the Japanese-Canadian community.  This house will stand as a symbol of the wrongs that were committed in the past, but also as a symbol of what a community can achieve when it pulls together."

Donations can be made to The Land Conservancy through our website at

www.conservancy.bc.ca, or by calling our Lower Mainland Office at (604) 733-2312 or our Head Office in Victoria at (250) 479-8053.

 

Contacts:		For TLC		Bill Turner		(250) 213-1090
				Tamsin Baker		(604) 722-2313
		For the Save Kogawa House Committee
				Anne-Marie Metten		(604) 263-6586
				Todd Wong		(604) 240-7090
				Anton Wagner		(416) 863-1209

 

A Writers Literary Landmark and Writers-in-Residence Centre for Vancouver

The following is a message from Anton Wagner, of the Save the Kogawa Homestead Committee:

Dear Todd,

Thank you for the great article "How important is saving Kogawa House? What other literary landmarks are in Vancouver?" on the http://www.gunghaggisfatchoy.com website.

I totally agree with Alan Twigg's suggestion to Ann-Marie that we also focus our campaign to save Joy's former home on Margaret Atwood's recognition of Vancouver's cultural desert of literary landmarks. As Alan writes in his entry on Pauline Johnson in the BC Bookworld Author Bank, "The Pauline
Johnson memorial in Stanley Park, above Third Beach, is the only literary monument erected in Vancouver for a Canadian writer during the 20th century."

Johnson died in 1913.

Other provinces and much smaller towns have established and supported such literary landmarks and a few writers-in-residence programs:

The Manitoba Department of Culture, Heritage and Tourism maintains the Margaret Laurence House in Neepawa as the Manitoba Provincial Heritage Site No. 25
http://www.gov.mb.ca/chc/hrb/prov/p025.html

In St. Boniface the non-profit corporation La Maison Gabrielle Roy Inc. operates the Gabrielle Roy House as a museum for the Franco-Manitoban writer with project grants from the federal, provincial and municipal governments and corporate, foundation and individual donor support. To date 105 women and 37 men have donated $1,000 each to the House.
http://www.maisongabrielleroy.mb.ca

In Eastend, Saskatchewan, the Eastend Arts Council owns and operates the Wallace Stegner House as a writer/artist's residence. Rent is $250 a month, including all utilities. The furnished house, built in 1916, contains a kitchen, dining, living room, study, two bedrooms and a bath and can accommodate two adults and one child. The house is funded in part by the Saskatchewan Heritage Foundation, the Writers' Development Trust, provincial, federal and civic government grants, and individual donations.
http://www.dinocountry.com/stegner_house.html

In Dawson City, the Yukon Arts Council and the Klondike Visitor's Association and the Dawson City Libraries Association operate the Berton House Writer's Residence Retreat. Initiated by Pierre Burton in his former boyhood home, the Writer's Residence Retreat enables professional Canadian writers to
write in the remote Northern community free of charge.

One item of great interest in your
http://users.yknet.yk.ca/dcpages/bertonhouse/story.html link is the last April 2001 item on that page, "Canada Council to support Berton House writers." It reports a grant of $100,000 from the Canada Council over a three-year period to the Berton House Writer's Retreat Society to enable four Canadian or
international writers to be in residence in the house for three months each, with a monthly fellowship of $2,000 and travel cost assistance. This would be a great precendent for us in seeking financial operating assistance from the Canada Council.

But again, no such writing centre and literary landmark exists in
Vancouver.The Federation of BC Writers operates a small writing cabin, gifted by George Fetherling, the Horsefly Manor Writers Retreat on Quesnel Lake in the Cariboo.
http://www.bcwriters.com/horsefly/

Lorna Crozier has informed us that the Haig-Brown House in Campbell River, operated by the non-profit conservation organization, the Haig-Brown Institute, has just opened its doors to writers, with Don McKay being the first writer-in-residence. http://www.haigbrowninstitute.org
 
Vancouver, one of Canada's most dynamic cities and our gateway to the East, needs a writers-in-residence centre as has been proposed for the Joy Kogawa House so that Canadian and international writers can observe and write about the unique evolving multi and intercultural society that is developing
in Canada.

Anton Wagner

Vancouver Heritage Foundation accepting donations for Kogawa House

A Donations page for Kogawa House has now been set up through the Vancouver Heritage Foundation.
http://www.vancouverheritagefoundation.org/Kogawa.html

A short story about the history of the house and the efforts to save it is listed

Vancouver Heritage Foundation
844 West Hastings Street Vancouver BC V6C 1C8

604-264-9642
email mail@vancouverheritagefoundation.org

For immediate release

November 3, 2005

120 days given to Kogawa House, as demolition timeline extended

This afternoon Vancouver City Council voted unanimously to grant an unprecedented 120-day delay of demolition for 1450 West 64th Avenue, the childhood home of author Joy Kogawa.

The present home owner bought the house in 2003, unaware that the Save Kogawa Homestead committee was trying to raise funds to turn the house into a writers’ retreat. The owner has now decided to demolish and rebuild on the site, prompting the now renamed Save Kogawa House committee to action, soliciting support from writing and arts organizations across the country.

Gerry McGeough, senior heritage planner in the Vancouver City Planning Department, was instrumental in bringing the motion before city council. He stated that the 1915 house could be registered as Class A heritage because of its cultural value and local and national prominence.

Todd Wong and Ann-Marie Metten led the committee’s presentation to council, with additional presentations from Diane Switzer of the Vancouver Heritage Foundation, Heather Redfern of the Alliance for Arts and Culture, and Marion Quednau of the Writers’ Union of Canada, demonstrating the wide local and national support across Canada to preserve the house,

Kogawa, received the Order of Canada in 1986 and her novel Obasan is school curriculum across Canada and studied around the world. The novel was also chosen as the Vancouver Public Library’s One Book One Vancouver selection for 2005. An operatic adaptation of the children’s story, Naomi’s Road, is now touring BC schools with the Vancouver Opera in the Schools program.

Joy Kogawa arrived via car and ferry from a performance of Naomi’s Road in Ucuelet, BC, just in time to read from her novel Obasan. Kogawa had only left City Hall on Tuesday, November 1st, which had been proclaimed “Obasan Cherry Tree Day”, as a graft from the cherry tree from Kogawa’s childhood home was planted at City Hall.

Council was so moved by the presentation that Councillor Raymond Louie immediately challenged other councillors to pull out their wallets and match his $100 donation. Councillor Ellen Woodsworth wrote an equivalent cheque and said council would challenge other city councils to match their donations as well. At the end of the meeting, the committee walked out of council chambers $540 richer.

An estimated $750,000 is needed to purchase the house from the owner at “fair market value.” McGeough has been mediating with the house owner and the Save Kogawa House committee, and the 120-day delay will give the committee time to fundraise this amount.

Charitable donations can be made online through the Vancouver Heritage Foundation website at http://www.vancouverheritagefoundation.org/Kogawa.html.

To celebrate this milestone in the Save Kogawa House campaign, a performance of the opera Naomi’s Road by the Vancouver Opera Touring Ensemble will be presented free to the public on November 12 at 2 pm. It will take place in the Alice MacKay Room of the Vancouver Public Library downtown. Special guest musician is Harry Aoki, who was interned at age 20.


For further information contact:

www.kogawa.homestead.com

www.kogawahouse.com

www.gunghaggisfatchoy.com/blog/OneBookOneVancouverJoyKogawasObasan


Ann-Marie Metten, Save Kogawa House Committee Vancouver Coordinator
604-263-6586; ametten@telus.net

Todd Wong, Vancouver Committee spokesperson
604-240-7090; toddwcan@yahoo.com
 
Anton Wagner, Committee Chair
416-863-1209; awagner@yorku.ca

Gerry McGeough, Senior Heritage Planner, Planning
Department, City of Vancouver
604-873-7091; gerry.mcgeough@vancouver.ca

Diane Switzer, Executive Director, Vancouver Heritage Foundation
604-264-9642; diane@vancouverheritagefoundation.org

The following is the basic text of my presentation to Vancouver City Council's Standing Committee on Planning and Environment, November 3rd, 2005.

Hello Council members and guests

Thank you for receiving our request for a delay of demolition  for 1450 West 64th Ave, known as “Kogawa House.”

Thank you also to council for attending the Joy Kogawa Cherry Tree planting and ceremony that took place here on Tuesday.

Save Kogawa House committee is a local and national advocacy committee in existence for two years since Kogawa House first came on the market.

We also thank the owner and representative, for working together with us to seek a peaceful resolution and a win, win, win situation for all parties involved.  The current owner of the house, the Save Kogawa House committee, and the citizens of Vancouver, and throughout Canada.
 
It is our vision to purchase the house from its current owner and transform it into a writers-in-residence centre, to give writers a taste of Vancouver’s multicultural diversity.  This will give special attention to writers of conscience, who can address human rights issues like those that removed Joy and her family away from their home to internment camps for the Japanese Canadians.

I am 5th Generation Vancouverite, my family has lived in Vancouver for 7 generations.  We suffered the racism of early Vancouver, and paid the Chinese head tax, clustered in Chinatown for protection.   After the Japanese Canadians were interned in camps, we were all afraid that what happened to the Japanese-Canadians, could happen to the Chinese too!  The experience shaped our Asian-Canadian pioneer communities, and we tried to be good Canadians, to integrate, and not cause trouble.

As I grew up in Vancouver, I have always related to the Japanese Canadian experience as a shared Asian Canadian experience, due to racism that lumped all Asians together.  But as my family intermarried into the many other ethnicities of Vancouver, I have come to understand that as Canadians, we are no longer two solitudes of English and French, but inclusive of Scottish, Irish, First Nations, Chinese, South Asian and Japanese culture.  Nor are we solitudes at all, but one family that is intermarried to each diverse immigrant group.

Kogawa House is not a Japanese Canadian issue.  It is a Canadian issue.  Kogawa House is not just a Japane-Canadian Internment Redress issue, it is a literary legacy for all Canadians.  By truly embracing the stories of Joy Kogawa’s works and the story of Kogawa House, we can truly say “never again” to a sorry episode in Canada’s history.

I was on the inaugural committee for the Vancouver Public Library’s One Book One Vancouver program, that introduced Vancouverites to Wayson Choy’s “The Jade Peony”  The program made the book come alive through many programs and events from May to September.

Since January of this year, I have been enthused by the idea that Obasan could be the 2005 choice.  I wrote an article citing 20 reasons why Obasan was the best choice including:
1) Roy Miki stating that Obasan is the most important book written to understanding the Japanese Canadian experience;
2) that Quill and Quire named Obasan one of the most influential Canadian works of fiction;
3) that Joy was born in Vancouver and recieved the Order of Canada in 1986.

Obasan is a book that every Vancouverite should read.  

In September, Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop hosted the Ricepaper Magazine 10th Anniversary Dinner, attended by councillors Roberts, Woodsworth, and Sullivan.  And we celebrated Joy with a Community Builders’ Award.

Joy is an author that every community should be so lucky to have.

I attended the Vancouver Opera world premiere of Naomi’s Road.  It brought tears to my eyes, and I wrote a review.  It is the story of two young children who were separate by their parents.  Their aunt takes them on a vacation, and while on the train, they come to the understanding that it isn't a vacation at all - they are going to an internment camp.  During the next 3 years, they will be branded enemy aliens, and they will never see their home again.

Naomi’s Road is an opera that every Vancouverite should see.

We would like to demonstrate our vision for Kogawa House, as a vision for Vancouver, and for Canada.  We will share with you how we will do this, and how writers and Canadians across Canada feel about this, and we hope to touch your hearts and inspire joy in your lives for this city we love.

I hope that we can say that Vancouver loves this book so much that we bought the house and we saved it.

Thank you.

Oh - one more thing....
Just as I arrived at City Hall today, house genealogist James Johnstone gave me a house history of Kogawa House.  He just decided to do this two days ago.  He found that it is one of the oldest houses in Marpole, and lists all the owners to present.  This is just one of the examples of how much this book and this house have moved people.

Thank you.

Kogawa House: Can we save the house? Can we move the house?

Lots of developments happening...

Monday, we met with Vancouver Heritage Foundation, and discussed strategies to save the house, and create a way for the present owner to donate the house to the VFH.  To preserve  the house at its present location will mean a purchase price of around $700,000.  To move the house will mean $50,000 + building a $200,000 foundation later.  What is cheaper?

The owner has not been willing to sell, so trying to save the house from demolition and move it seems the best idea.  There is a proposed park that will commemorate the Japanese Canadian community at Selkirk and 72nd Ave.

To avoid the demolition of the house, we have planned to go to City Council to ask for a stay of demolition, due to the Heritage quality of the house.
Initially that would have been Oct 20 - but the demolition application has not been submitted yet.

But yesterday, the owner may have had a change of heart...  Gerry McGeough, senior planner for City of Vancouver, may have brokered a deal where the owner will delay demolition for 120 days, allowing us to raise funds to purchase the house. 

This is great news.  The house may not be destroyed yet... and it gives us time to raise monies.

Because of these latest developments, Joy will not be interviewed for CBC Radio Early Edition on Thursday morning. CBC wants to wait and see what happens next!