British Columbia

Ann-Lee and Gordon Switzer

Ann-Lee and Gordon Switzer are the authors of Gateway to Promise: Canada’s First Japanese Community, and Sakura in Stone: Victoria’s Japanese Legacy. A husband and wife historian team, they became interested in the prewar Japanese Canadian community in Victoria after becoming involved in the local Japanese Canadian community and being asked to write about the […]

Hiromi Goto

Hiromi Goto is a writer and author of Chorus of Mushrooms, The Kappa Child, Hopeful Monsters, for adults, and The Water of Possibility, Half World, and Darkest Light for youth. She co-wrote Wait Until Late Afternoon (poetry) with David Bateman. Showa Shinzan, an NFB animated short directed by Alison Reiko Loader, was co-written with Jesse […]

Carolyn Nakagawa

Carolyn Nakagawa is a poet and playwright whose work has appeared in theatres around Greater Vancouver and in various literary journals across Canada, including Ricepaper, Room, EVENT, and CV2. She was a finalist for the Malahat Review’s 2017 Open Season contest in the poetry category. Born and raised in the suburbs of Vancouver, Carolyn studied […]

Number One Son

Number One Son was a Vancouver Asian Canadian folk-rock band. Its members included Martin Kobayakawa, Kuan Foo, Sean Gunn, and later Terry Watada. They released two albums: Number One Son and Hockeynight in Chinatown.

Masaki Watanabe

Masaki Watanabe is a journalist/translator and a jazz musician with an international background. Born in Tokyo in 1945 to a Japanese Finnish father and a Japanese mother, he graduated from International Christian University in 1966 after which he joined Reuters news agency in London. He has since worked as a Reuters correspondent in North America […]

Saeko Usukawa

Saeko Usukawa was an editor for everything from alternative-culture magazines to major publishing house Douglas & McIntyre. Born in Lemon Creek internment camp, Saeko grew up in Toronto. After studying briefly at university, she quickly became the youngest editor at Macmillan Publishers. She also became involved in the women’s movement and protests against Apartheid and […]

Ruth Ozeki

Ruth Ozeki is the author of the novels My Year of Meats (1998), All Over Creation (2003), and A Tale for the Time-Being (2013). She is also a filmmaker and a Zen Buddhist priest. Her novels have been published in over thirty countries, and translated into 11 languages. Ozeki splits her time between British Columbia […]

Jeff Chiba Stearns

Jeff Chiba Stearns is an Emmy® nominated and Webby award-winning animation and documentary filmmaker, as well as an acclaimed author and illustrator. After graduating from the Emily Carr University with a degree in Film Animation, he founded Vancouver-based boutique animation studio and publishing company Meditating Bunny Studio Inc. in 2001. Jeff’s short and feature length […]

Chie Kamegaya

Chie Kamegaya was a poet and author of Seasons in New Denver: Haiku (1994). Born in Japan to a samurai family, Kamegaya became a teacher in Tokyo, where she met her husband. After marriage, she joined him in Canada, and they both taught at the New Westminster Japanese Language School from 1931 to 1941, when […]

Katsuyoshi Morita

Katsuyoshi Morita was the author of Powell Street Monogatari, a chronicle of stories from the prewar Japanese Canadian neighbourhood of Powell Street and Morita’s experiences in the internment camp of Greenwood during the forced removal. Powell Street Monogatari was originally written in Japanese, and translated into English by Eric Sokugawa (translation published in 1989).

Sadashi Inuzuka

Sadashi Inuzuka is a visual artist with a background in ceramics who also creates installations and public art projects. Born in Japan, he had a life-long ambition to immigrate to North America and become an artist. He received a diploma from the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in 1985, and went on to […]

Takako Suzuki

Takako Suzuki is a Japanese-born potter who practiced in Vancouver prior to her retirement. She studied at Meiji University in Tokyo, and after immigrating to Canada, at Emily Carr College of Art & Design. Her work was shown in a number of solo and group exhibitions in the 1980s and 1990s, primarily in Vancouver, and […]

Kaneko Johkoh

Kaneko Johkoh is a painter. Born in Ehime prefecture, Japan, she started oil painting in 1961, and became active in artists’ associations in Japan. In 1983, she started doing bokusho abstract sumi-e (ink brush) drawings, a style which she exhibited in Japan, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Mexico, and eventually brought with her to Canada. She […]

Alan Nakatsui

Alan Nakatsui is an architect based in Lake Country, BC. Born in Alberta, he began his career there with the Calgary-based firm Bathory Associates after receiving a BSC in Civil Engineering (1975) and a Master of Environmental Design in Architecture (1986) from the University of Calgary. Projects in Alberta include hotels, townhouses, and the Chula […]

Tom Motomochi

Tom Motomochi is an architect with a long career with the Toronto-based Moriyama & Teshima firm. He graduated from the University of British Columbia with a BSc in Mathematics and Physics in 1962, and went on to study architecture at the University of Toronto, graduating from there in 1967. He has worked on many buildings […]