British Columbia History 55.2 Summer 2022

“The history that lies inert and unread in books does no work in the world,” warned Carl Becker in his presidential address to the American Historical Association in 1931. He urged his peers instead to write what he called “living history,” that is, “history that influences the course of history.” I’m not sure how his peers received these comments. Surely, some shook their heads. Many among them had written books that, even as he spoke, gathered dust. But Becker addressed the profession at a time of deep economic crisis and social change. Some in the room had to be asking themselves where things were headed and what they themselves might do. Today, we might similarly ask, How can history contribute to a future in question? Our content creators live in…

Dear Editor, I’d like to supplement my article “On Hallowed Ground” [in Spring 2022, 55.1]. Inexplicably, Queen Charlotte Airlines owner Jim Spilsbury wrote in his book, The Accidental Airline, that the co-pilot of Queen Charlotte Airlines Flight 102, Jiginder Singh Johl, “had no commercial pilot’s licence at all. He was just a baggage handler that McQueen had grabbed off the loading ramp to warm the seat.” The facts are that Johl did hold a valid commercial pilot’s licence and radio licence and had accumulated over 900 hours of flying time with QCA alone. On March 5, 1951, just seven months before the fatal Mount Benson crash, Johl was co-piloting QCA’s Alaska Queen, a Stranraer with 18 people aboard, when poor visibility in a blizzard forced a water landing in Johnstone…

The Canadian government uprooted and interned all people of Japanese descent living in coastal British Columbia in 1942.1 The following year, it authorized the sale of everything that they had been forced to leave behind. As a result, when officials finally lifted the laws banning Japanese Canadians from their former communities in 1949, they had nothing to return to. Their homes, farms, businesses, fishing vessels, cars, family pets, personal belongings (in short, everything they had been unable to take with them) were gone. Families lost heirlooms and everyday possessions. They lost decades of investment and work. As a result of the dispossession, Japanese Canadians also lost opportunities, neighbourhoods, and communities. They lost retirements, livelihoods, and educations. The uprooting and dispossession transformed the geography of British Columbia: hundreds of localities where…

1. This article is adapted from the Introduction of Landscapes of Injustice: A New Perspective on the Internment and Dispossession of Japanese Canadians (McGill Queens University Press, 2020). 2.“A Statement is in Order,” The New Canadian, February 20, 1943, 2. 3.“Would Ban Oriental from Living here,” The Daily Colonist, November 22, 1922, 7. See also “New Resolution on Oriental Question,” The Daily Colonist, November 17, 1922, 9; cited in Patricia E. Roy, The Oriental Question: Consolidating a White Man’s Province, 1914–41 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003), 116. 4. Ian Mackenzie to John Godwin, December 7, 1942, file 70-25(3), vol. 25, MG 27 III-B5, LAC. 5. Ephraim H. Coleman to Norman Robertson, March 16, 1942, file 4606-c-13-40, vol. 3121, RG 25, LAC. 6. John Erskine Read, Note for Undersecretary of State for…

Broken Promises is a museum-based and virtual travelling exhibit that complements and highlights research from the Landscapes of Injustice project. Visitors to the in-person exhibit (as well as those doing the virtual tour at https://my.matterport.com/ show/?m=tkFh4LGxnya) can learn about life for Japanese Canadians in Canada before the war, the administration of their lives during and after the war, and how legacies of dispossession continue to this day. The exhibit includes previously unreleased photographs and historical items. Broken Promises is structured around the stories of seven Japanese Canadians—a farmer, surveyor, single mother, store owner, fisher, accountant, and cook—who were interned during the war. Their stories are told in first-person accounts. Broken Promises also contains teaching resources, including digital lesson plans for elementary and secondary classrooms that explore the dispossession of Japanese…

Extensive educational resources and powerful learning tools are big parts of the Landscapes of Injustice project. These newly developed educational resources include specific teacher lesson packages for elementary and secondary classrooms. These are free and can be used in conjunction with or completely apart from museum and other resources on the history of Japanese Canadians. The elementary lessons are engaging and accessible, using the internment and dispossession of Japanese Canadians to help students learn about the world by seeking answers to big questions: What is fair? How do we deal with unfairness? What is home? Community? What is the difference between belonging and belongings? Students use an engaging simulation to help them understand internment and dispossession, then use a series of supporting lessons to process this learning. Go to https://loi.uvic.ca/…