Organizers of the drive to preserve the childhood home of novelist and poet Joy Kogawa were jubilant after Vancouver City Council voted unanimously on November 3 to grant a 120-day demolition delay order to preserve the home and to recognize its historical and cultural heritage. The four month period will allow the Save Kogawa House Committee to raise funds to purchase the property and convert it into a major centre for Canadian and international writers.
For Kogawa, the West 64th Avenue property became a symbol of lost hope and happiness after Joy, then six years old, and her family were removed from their home and interned in the Slocan Valley in 1942 as part of the forced evacuations and internment of 21,000 Japanese-Canadians during World War II. Joy’s family was never compensated for the confiscation of their property. Their house and personal belongings, like those of other internees, were auctioned off at rock bottom prices by the government’s “Custodian of Enemy Alien Property” and the proceeds used to pay for the government’s expenses in running the internment camps.
The loss of the house and the dispersal of the Japanese Canadian community until their civil rights were restored in 1949 inspired Kogawa’s best-known novel, Obasan, winner of the Canadian Authors’ Association Book of the Year Award in 1981. Its adaptation for children, Naomi’s Road, premiered as a Vancouver Opera production on September 30th and visits more than 140 schools and community centres from Vancouver Island to the Kootenays until May 2006. Roy Miki, 2003 Governor General’s Award Winner for Poetry, has called Obasan the most important literary work of the past 30 years for understanding Canadian history. In 2005 Obasan was selected by the Vancouver Public Library for its One Book One Vancouver program, encouraging all Vancouverites to read this single book.
In her letter on behalf of the League of Canadian Poets, Mary Ellen Csamer wrote Mayor Larry Campbell and the Vancouver City Councillors that “The League of Canadian Poets, representing over 730 professional poets across Canada, supports the effort to save Joy Kogawa’s childhood home on 1450 West 64th Avenue in Vancouver from demolition, and would like to encourage its conversion into a major writers centre for Canadian and international writers. Just as Emily Carr’s home in Victoria and Pierre Berton’s in the Yukon provide a unique sense of the physical space that helped to define those artists, so this building forms an important part of our collective cultural imagination. To create a writers’ centre would be an appropriate and timely action, which would draw national and international writers to the West Coast for cultural stimulation and peaceful retreat.”
In addition to the League, the other writers’ organizations supporting converting Kogawa House into a writers-in-residence centre include The Writers Union of Canada, the Federation of BC Writers, the Playwrights Guild of Canada, the Canadian Authors Association, the Periodical Writers Association of Canada, PEN Canada, the Vancouver International Writers and Readers Festival, the Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, and the Asian Canadian Writers Workshop. The project has also been endorsed by the Vancouver Public Library Board, Vancouver Opera, the Alliance for Arts and Culture, Heritage Vancouver, the Land Conservancy, the National Nikkei Museum and Heritage Centre, and the National Association of Japanese Canadians.
The Save Kogawa House Committee is looking for one thousand individuals to donate $100 each for the Joy Kogawa Writers-in Residence Centre but would of course greatly welcome donations of all sizes. The Committee is also targeting corporations, foundations and the federal government for support.
Donations can be made through the Vancouver Heritage Foundation which has established a Kogawa house rescue fund and will issue charitable receipts. All donations to the rescue fund receive a tax receipt for the full amount of the donation. Cheques should be made out to “Vancouver Heritage Foundation” and mailed to the Vancouver Heritage Foundation, 844 West Hastings St., Vancouver, B.C. V6C 1C8. Donors are asked to indicate on the cheque memo line: “Save Kogawa House.” Donations can also be made on-line on the Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s website.
Speaking at the Vancouver International Writers Festival on October 13, Margaret Atwood declared, “The destruction of the Kogawa home would be a great loss of cultural heritage for Vancouver, for British Columbia, and for Canada. Although Canada scored high on the recent all-nations report card, it scored low on culture, history and heritage. Why destroy more of this precious asset?”