The Tyee is one of my favorite webzines. It is self-described as feisty and presents an alternative view to mainstream media. I met founder David Beers at a panel discussion at the Vancouver Public Library back in December. This is the first article on Kogawa House in The Tyee.
When the quest to save a house of historical significance collides with a booming Vancouver real estate market, the end result sometimes favors development, and even destruction, over preservation.
So far, that’s been the case for the childhood home of author Joy Kogawa, located in Vancouver’s Marpole neighbourhood. Like otherwise once-overlooked neighbourhoods in the Greater Vancouver area, Marpole is now experiencing an influx of interest and dollars — to the dismay of historians and literature enthusiasts across the country. That’s because the Kogawa house, which is located at 1450 West 64th Avenue, is facing a day of reckoning with a bulldozer.
Kogawa is the most celebrated of Japanese-Canadian writers; her novel Obasan has not only won a big following internationally, it has single handedly educated otherwise unknowing Canadians about of Canada’s darkest chapters, the interment of Japanese-Canadians during World War II (the internment experience in the novel is set in Slocan City).
Please read the whole story at: http://thetyee.ca/Views/2006/02/13/HouseofJoy/