Culture Days reached out to Community Reporters across Canada to submit articles to culture365 about their experience during the Culture Days weekend that took place from September 27 to 29. The reporters were asked to describe their experience and observations of Culture Days activities they attended in their communities and the impact they had on the artists and public participating. Below is a report by Carolyn B. Heller from Vancouver, British Columbia. To read other reports, follow the tag #community reports.
I left a very beautiful life to come here,” Mahsa Ramezani told the audience at “North Shore Stories: Adventures in Immigration” during Culture Days 2013.
At five events around British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, I experienced Culture Days as a virtual immigrant, following stories of newcomers like Ramezani from around the globe.
Some traveled to Canada back in the 1800s, while others arrived as recently as Ramezani, who came from her native Iran just six months ago – all sharing new immigrants’ tales of happiness, hardship, and hope.
Taiken: Japanese Canadians since 1877 (Burnaby, BC)
“The fish are so plentiful that they virtually leap into boats. Come and join me.”
Many of the first Japanese who immigrated to Canada in the 1870s were optimistic about their new life, according to “Taiken,” a permanent exhibit at the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre. This self-guided exhibition shares personal experiences of these Japanese newcomers through photographs, letters, and other reminiscences.
During World War II, these personal stories turned dark, as British Columbia’s government “evacuated” the flourishing Japanese community from Canada’s west coast.
Everything that my father was able to build since coming to Canada… was taken away overnight…”
In 1942, the government designated more than 21,000 Japanese-Canadians as “enemy aliens,” confiscating their homes and sending many to internment camps for the duration of the war.
“For me, the worst part was being declared an enemy alien by my own country. I was a patriotic Canadian, but I had the face of the enemy.”
During Culture Days, the museum also celebrated now-thriving Japanese-Canadian culture at its Nikkei Fall Harvest Fair, with demonstrations of martial arts, music, and sushi preparation, as well as delicious snacks ranging from chicken karaage to Japanese crepes and yuzu-flavored waffles.
Walking Tour of Jewish Strathcona and Gastown (Vancouver, BC)
Comedian Jack Benny met his future wife at a Passover seder on Vancouver’s East Hastings Street.
That was just one of many stories that Michael Schwartz, Coordinator of Programs and Development at the Jewish Museum & Archives of British Columbia, shared during this guided walk through two of Vancouver’s oldest neighborhoods.
Our tour began outside the city’s first synagogue and continued past the former rabbi’s home, the Council of Jewish Women’s neighborhood house, and other buildings that were important to Vancouver’s Jewish community from the late 1880s through mid-1900s.
In now-trendy Gastown, Schwartz pointed out a brick warehouse that once belonged to David Oppenheimer, Vancouver’s first Jewish mayor. Today, singer-songwriter Bryan Adams owns what is now the Warehouse Studio, where performers from Elton John to Elvis Costello have recorded their own musical stories.
Under the Rafters: Behind the Scenes Tour of the Gulf of Georgia Cannery (Richmond, BC)
“Once upon a time, when Steveston was bustling with canneries…”
Christina Froschauer, Programs and Volunteer Coordinator at the Gulf of Georgia Cannery Society, began our “Behind the Scenes” tour by explaining how the cannery tells immigrants’ stories through the objects that they left behind.
Our first stop at this National Historic Site was actually outside in the parking lot. Froschauer pointed out that the present-day parking area once contained wooden bunkhouses for cannery workers, each organized by ethnic group – one for the Japanese, Chinese, First Nations, and Europeans who worked the salmon canning lines in the early 1900s.
Entering the cannery building itself, we climbed the steep wooden stairs to the dimly lit Collections Room, which is jammed with nets, ropes, machinery, and other artifacts. Not normally open to the public, this room holds everything from a menacing-looking ice hook to 17 toilets!
Tour the Gur Sikh Temple (Abbotsford, BC)
By 1906, more than 5,000 Sikhs had arrived in British Columbia from India’s Punjab region, many settling east of Vancouver to work in lumber mills or on farms, explained Sharanjit Kaur Sandhra, as she led a tour through Abbotsford’s Gur Sikh Temple museum.
Sandhra, Coordinator of the Centre for Indo Canadian Studies at the University of the Fraser Valley, shared stories of the Sikh community’s early days, when these newcomers built a gurdwara (temple) in Abbotsford. Completed in 1911, this simple wood-framed structure remains the oldest standing Sikh temple in North America.
Many descendants of these early immigrants still live in the Abbotsford area, Sandhra said, where Indo-Canadians comprise approximately 15% of the city’s population.
North Shore Stories: Adventures in Immigration (North Vancouver, BC)
It’s so hard to be a friend with Canadians, right? But I have a different story to tell.”
Bozena Felsz, one of seven women who shared her experiences as an immigrant to Canada during this evening of storytelling, dispelled the perception that Canadians are polite but distant to newcomers. Felsz told of three people she met after she came to Canada from Poland who taught her English, introduced her to Canadian foods, and guided her “like guardian angels” through her early years here.
One of the first words I learned was - welcome,” Felsz recounted.
Jennifer Shi, who emigrated from China, compared her experience adjusting to her new country to a legend her grandmother told about a man with a bamboo seed.
The man planted his bamboo, but as years passed and the seed didn’t sprout, his wife and neighbours began to think he was crazy to put his faith into his fledgling bamboo crop.
Finally, after five years, the bamboo began to grow, until the man had a thriving forest.
I am the bamboo,” Shi explained. “This is my third year in Canada. I’m waiting for my bamboo forest.”
Like Felsz and Shi, Mahsa Ramezani, a physician who arrived from Iran to join her husband in Canada, described the challenges of making her way in her adopted country.
Yet like many immigrants who told their stories during Culture Days, Ramezani shared her dreams for her new Canadian life.
I hope that after three or four years,” she said, “I’ll be able to say how happy I am in Canada.”
Photo credit: Carolyn B. Heller
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