Sunshine Coast Museum and Archives is leading collaborative project with Egmont Heritage Centre and Pender Harbour Living Heritage Society.
Despite the fact history shows Japanese settlers arrived in Egmont not long after the Portuguese in the late 1880s, there’s not a lot of information available about their presence in those early days, says the executive director of the Egmont Heritage Centre.
“The Japanese were one of the very first settlers along with the Portuguese,” says Renee Pelletier. “But we just don’t really talk about them very much. So, they’re in the story here [at the heritage centre], but also in my storyboards, but there are mistakes.”
Pelletier wants to help correct those mistakes, while also broadening the amount of information available about the Japanese who settled in the area pre-and post-war. She notes it was a Japanese family who first owned what today is called Backeddy Marina, which at the time was a hub where fish was bought and sold from the First Nations peoples who had already been in the area for time immemorial. As far as recorded history goes, the Village of Egmont was founded in 1880 by Joseph Silvia Simmonds, the infamous prospector, seaman and trader eventually known as “Portuguese Joe.”
Pelletier says in order to gather as much correct information as possible about Japanese history in Egmont, the heritage centre has joined the ongoing Japanese Community History Project started by the Sunshine Coast Museum and Archives (SCMA) a decade ago.
The Pender Harbour Living History Heritage Society is also part of the effort to create a coast-wide series of exhibits to explore Japanese community history on the Sunshine Coast. With help from a grant from the Sunshine Coast Foundation, their goal is to fill in the gaps.
SCMA curator/manager and project lead Matthew Lovegrove, describes the venture as, “our most ambitious community collaborative project to date.”
The project will culminate with a rollout of exhibits next April, with installations planned at the Egmont Heritage Centre, Sarah Wray Hall in Pender Harbour and the Sunshine Coast Museum and Archives — with additional sites still to be announced.
Lovegrove said he seed of this project started with the work of past curator Kimiko Hawkes, around 2013/2014, when she began researching and publishing articles for the museum on Japanese Sunshine Coasters. That research grew into a larger project in 2019, with a goal of the work culminating in an exhibit.
Each exhibit will be unique to its location, focusing on community-specific stories while connecting to a broader theme, the role Japanese Canadians played in building vibrant communities on the Sunshine Coast. The team is delving deep into stories from both pre-and post-war periods, including the Japanese internment, which took place following the December 1941 attacks by Imperial Japan on Pearl Harbour and Hong Kong. This dark period of Japanese-Canadian history started in 1942, when more than 22,000 Japanese Canadians were forcibly removed from their homes in Greater Vancouver and along the B.C. coast and incarcerated in internment camps and other settlements in the interior of the province and beyond, until 1949.
“Yes, there was internment here on the Sunshine Coast. And with the dispossession — homes, belongings being taken and sold — it left a huge impact,” he said. “It’s a tough subject, but such an important part of history to learn from.”
The museum team has been researching Japanese history for several years and is relying heavily on relationships within the community and word-of-mouth to uncover family stories, photographs and objects. In what marks a first for the region, the museums are working together to deliver shared but localized stories.
“There will be some thematic overlap,” Lovegrove said, “but each site will reflect its own community’s history. We all work together regularly, but this is the first time we’re launching a series like this all at once, as part of one thematic whole. It’s something really special for the Coast.”
Lovegrove said the museum/centres are fortunate to be working with community members who have been generous with their time and stories, noting it’s those voices that are shaping the exhibits. The project is also being supported by leading academics, including Japanese Canadian scholars from Vancouver.
“We’re learning constantly from researchers who’ve been studying these histories for decades,” he said. “It’s a privilege.”
For those with stories, photos or artifacts to share, please contact the Egmont Heritage Centre, Pender Harbour Living Heritage Society, or the Sunshine Coast Museum and Archives, to contribute to this living history project.
AloJapan.com