Joy Kogawa Vancouver Courier - On Line - News
awagner
awagner at YORKU.CA
Mon Jan 19 18:12:20 EST 2004
Welcome to the Vancouver Courier - On Line - News
Dear Friends,
Please find below John McCrank's Vancouver Courier article regarding the former Joy Kogawa family home in Vancouver.
There is also an on-line poll which asks people to vote yes or no on the following question: "Should the childhood home of Obasan author Joy Kogawa be preserved as a heritage site?". To find this poll, please do the Google word search for "joy kogawa" below and push go. This will lead you to one Google link that connects you to the poll for voting. Best wishes, Anton Wagner.
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Site updated Monday, January 19, 2004 09:35 AM
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New owners of the Marpole house where author Joy Kogawa grew up were issued a stop work order by the city when they began unauthorized renovations on the property at 1450 W. 64th Ave. Photo by Dan Toulgoet.
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New owners of Marpole house caught up in heritage controversy
By John McCrank-Contributing writer
A modest 1920s bungalow in Marpole has been the subject of a lot of controversy over the past few months, with a group fighting to have it designated as a cultural heritage site against the wishes of the owner, who wants to complete renovations and settle in.
"New owners moved in and started making renovations, which caused all hell to break loose," said Coun. Jim Green. "The city ran in and put a stop work order on the house because they didn't have the proper permits."
The house was once the childhood home of Canadian author and member of the Order of Canada, Joy Kogawa.
During World War II, Kogawa and her family, like other Japanese-Canadians, were forced by the federal government to leave their home and relocate to an internment camp. Their Marpole house was then auctioned off at a bargain price by the government's "Custodian of Enemy Alien Property."
Kogawa wrote about the house in her 1983 autobiographical novel Obasan, which tells the story of the internment of Japanese-Canadians during the war. That book has been called one of the 10 most important Canadian novels and is mandatory reading in many Canadian schools.
When Kogawa visited the house at 1450 West 64th Ave. last August and saw that it was for sale, she and supporters tried to raise enough money to buy it, but another buyer came forward with the money first.
Last December, when it was discovered that renovations were being done on the house without a permit, the Joy Kogawa Homestead Foundation contacted both the city and the media in order to increase the pressure to have it preserved.
When the stop work order was issued, the new owners complied and also donated the three doors and 12 windows that they had removed to the city for safe keeping.
"I think the owners have found the intensity of both the media coverage and the intensity of the opinions that were being expressed very challenging and I don't think that some of it was quite fair," said city heritage planner Terry Brunette.
"People had not realized the position that these people were in," he said, adding that the new owners did not know the cultural or historical significance of the house when they bought it, but have a great appreciation for the house and have no plans to demolish it.
That's good news for the Kogawa Homestead Foundation, which is made up of members across the country. The foundation plans to continue raising money with the goal of buying the house sometime in the future.
About $30,000 has been raised since Christmas, and the foundation will continue to raise the rest of the approximately $480,000 potentially needed to buy the home, said member Anton Wagner, a filmmaker and cultural historian at York University in Toronto.
"Apparently, [the new owner] is reading Joy's novel, Obasan, to find out what all of the fuss is about," said Wagner. "So hopefully she would be able to appreciate the emotional and historical significance the house has for the Japanese-Canadian community and anybody else [...] who thinks we shouldn't forget about [the interment of Japanese-Canadians], which a lot of people have."
If the owner, who doesn't speak English and has declined to be interviewed, ever wants to sell the house, the foundation hopes to buy it and use it as a memorial to Japanese-Canadian experiences during World War II, and as a writer's retreat, said Vancouver heritage conservationist Michael Kluckner.
"We are losing these places that are connected with significant individuals in our past, so I'm pleased that the Kogawa house is standing at least," he said.
People interested in learning more can visit the foundation's web site at http://kogawa.homestead.com.
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