As Miki Stewart gathered with her family at the Japanese Cultural Association of Manitoba on Saturday afternoon, she was thinking of her parents, Yoshimaru and Yoshi Abe.

Both Stewart, 80, and her sister Yumi Falk, 81, alongside an older brother, were born in the Tashme internment camp in British Columbia. They were among more than 2,600 Japanese Canadians who were forcefully removed and interred at the camp following the bombing of Pearl Harbour and Canada’s declaration of war on Japan in 1941.

“They didn’t talk much about how they suffered,” Stewart said of her parents. “But they did.”

She was amongst a group of more than 150 people who gathered at the association’s McPhillips headquarters on Saturday afternoon to watch the unveiling of the Japanese Canadian Monument in Victoria B.C.

Consisting of 100 granite slabs and surrounded by a traditional Japanese garden, the monument carries the names of the more than 22,000 Japanese Canadians who were interred under the government measure, which saw restrictions on the community’s movements until 1949.

The siblings recalled how their parents sometimes shared stories about how people banded together inside the camp and everyday life; their parents’ strength, something that defined them.

“How we are today is because of our parents,” Falk said.

The sisters said their family never expressed bitterness or shame, about being interred, which was something many community members grappled with, saying one of the characteristics they inherited from their mother was her resilience.

“My mother was a very strong woman, so all us girls in the family, we became very strong,” Stewart said.

Doreen Amadatsu, now 88, was just three years old when her family was forcefully removed from Vancouver. She still has a photo of her mother in front of the grocery store her family owned, just one asset taken from them.

“We had to leave literally everything,” she said. “All you could carry was in two suitcases.”

Amadatsu said she feels Victoria is the perfect place for the monument to be erected.

She said it’s “spit in their eye” when it comes to the Victoria-and-area loyalists who wanted the Japanese citizens removed from the coast, a group she said were among the most “outspoken” in eviction efforts.

Looking through a booklet containing the names on the memorial, she said it’s important future generations know this part of their history. She said while her son is not interested, she hopes her grandson will someday visit the monument.

“One day, he will search out his roots,” she said. “He will want to know the Japanese side.”

The watch party was organized by the association’s Horizon Club, which supports 55-plus community members.

Its president Marlene Mori, said the Japanese community in Winnipeg is small, but solid, with many descendants displaced coming from the Maple Ridge area of B.C., ties that still hold strong today.

Patrice Yamada, 73, whose family members are on the Victoria monument, got to tour the site in August months before its official opening and called the experience overwhelming.

“I wasn’t prepared for the emotional wave of seeing my family’s name up in stone,” Yamada said. “And to recall the reason their names appear there is because of all the hardship they went through for no reason; other than being a person of colour.”

Yamada said when people were expelled from the coast, not only did they lose their possessions and property, but a connection.

“They were Canadians with a community,” Yamada said. “When that was thrown out, because of prejudice, discrimination and fear; that community sense just evaporated.”

She said the event on Saturday is chance for people to come together, re-connect and speak out against a injustice committed by a country they wanted to build.

“We were here in Canada to build a beautiful country together,” she said. “Now, we can raise our hands and say: ‘This was a wrong. Never do it again’ and let us move forward together.”

In Manitoba, it’s unclear how many people actually were displaced from B.C. to the prairie province, an example of how the measure — which government officially apologized for in 1988 — dismantled families’ lives, legacies and lineage.

Sandra Shibata’s eyes welled with tears as she points to her family’s name laid out on a table inside a room separate from the watch party.

The five names, which includes her dad and other family members, are amongst hundreds spread out across tables at the centre.

They’re part of an effort to locate and accurately list all of the families who landed in Manitoba following the government order.

For her, she said the work being done in B.C. and in Manitoba is critical to honour those who came before and set the foundation for the current Japanese community.

“It recognizes what they’ve done for us in the past,” Shibata said. “We have freedom. Away from discrimination, from harassment. All those things.”

With the older generation living by the Japanese mantra of “saki e susumu,” which means move forward, Shibata said her family never spoke about what they went through. But with the unveiling of the monument, she now feels they would want the story shared and the history honoured.

“I think they’d finally say: ‘It’s time to talk about it,’ Shibata said. “During the war, and shortly thereafter, with us growing up, they didn’t want to talk about it. It was part of the things they wanted to forget, but now that we’ve become proud Canadians integrated into society, I think they’d be pleased to see that.”

morgan.modjeski@freepress.mb.ca

Morgan Modjeski is a news reporter and multimedia producer for the Free Press. Read more about Morgan.

Every piece of reporting Morgan produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about ’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.

Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.

Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.

Morgan Modjeski is a news reporter and multimedia producer for the Free Press. Read more about Morgan.

Every piece of reporting Morgan produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about ’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.

Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.

Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.

'Who, on any day, can just afford an immediate $500 increase in rent?'

Listen to this article

Two tenants of a Winnipeg apartment complex facing a $500 rent increase after primarily cosmetic upgrades are handling the news differently, but both say the spike is unjustified.

Aidan Wilson has lived at the Maryland Street apartment since about 2022.

Wilson, who can recount the priceless memories he and his partner have experienced in the apartment over the years, says a 54 per cent increase after recent upgrades to the building's common areas is unfair.

"Who, on any day, can just afford an immediate $500 increase in rent?" he told CBC News.

"It has us rethinking what our long-term goals are, and accelerat[ing] some of those and looking around."

The upgrades include wobbly steps covered up with fresh carpet, a crooked deadbolt and new paint that is already peeling. Wilson showed the recent work to CBC News during a walkabout inside the building at 154 Maryland St., at the intersection with Alloway Avenue.

Wingspan Properties did not respond to CBC's request for comment before publication.

Wilson was one of 94 people registered to speak at a committee hearing on Friday, where Manitoba MLAs heard about double-digit rent increases, and from landlords defending themselves.

The hearing was about Bill 13, the Residential Tenancies Amendment Act, which Public Service Delivery Minister Mintu Sandhu introduced earlier this year, calling it the "largest expansion to rent controls in decades."

WATCH | Renters, landlords plead case to Manitoba MLAs:

Residents of a Maryland Street apartment complex in Winnipeg are deciding whether to pay $500 more in rent, while the Manitoba government heard from the public Friday about proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act.

The proposed regulatory changes, which are separate from the bill, would raise the rent-exemption threshold from $1,670 to $2,000 for units in buildings 20 years old or older, Sandhu said. The guideline rent increase in Manitoba is currently 1.8 per cent, a number tied to inflation, but the exemption only covers renters paying less than $1,670 per month.

David Gurvey, CEO of S.A.M. Management, told the committee he's worried about one proposed regulation that would minimize how much of a renovation's cost a landlord can pass on to renters when applying for a rent increase above the annual cap.

Gurvey — whose non-profit corporation manages more than 60 properties in Winnipeg, including co-ops, family and Manitoba Housing units, and accommodations for seniors — told the committee not all landlords are the same.

"You have to deal with the bad actors, and not paint all the good actors with that same bad brush," he said.

'Doesn't warrant any of the cost'

Sandhu wouldn't say whether the proposed regulation Gurvey voiced concerns on will be enacted.

"I want to make sure [landlords] have a reasonable return on their investment. I'm committed also [to] affordability for the renters," Sandhu told CBC News.

While Wilson is choosing to fight the rent increase at the Maryland Street apartment, Lloyd Burns is moving out.

"We're just one of the whole heap of people that are going to be forced out because of Wingspan [Properties] and their practices," Burns told CBC News, while in the middle of packing his belongings into a moving truck on Friday.

The management company did some work to the building's boiler and security camera system, but Burns says the overall upgrades do not justify the rent increase.

"If you see the repairs they've done and the painting they've done, it's so below standard, [and] it doesn't warrant any of the cost."

Winnipeg’s Japanese Canadian community members gathered to mark the opening of the new monument in British Columbia honouring the nearly 25,000 Japanese Canadians who were uprooted from their homes during World War 2.

“I was just happy that it is happening, that they are recognizing it,” Marlene Mori, seniors’ club president, Japanese Cultural Association of Manitoba.

“And all these names are going to be in a permanent location where they will be memorialized forever.”

Beginning in 1942, thousands of Japanese Canadians were forcibly removed from their homes and incarcerated or dispersed across Canada.

Most attendees were children at the time of uprooting in British Columbia.

Mori say it saddened to see that very few in Manitoba know the history of their uprooting, adding that it is important to learn that history lesson.

“To understand the kind of discrimination that was going on back then, what kinds of consequences it had,” Mori said. “It is very important. So we don’t repeat it again.”

Atsumi Odaguchi was only a child during the uprooting.

Her family spent four years in the Tashme interment camp, the largest for Japanese Canadians during World War 2.

Odaguchi says like many other families her parents never spoke about the reality of the camps.

“Those are the people who are affected the most,” Odaguchi said. “Not the little kids like me. But when I read about it afterwards, I think: ‘Thank God I was a little child.’”

Some of the attendees were supporting their family members and say such events help them to learn their untold family history

“I didn’t really learn about what happened to my grandmother until I was at the university and not through school,” said Sydney Christie, descendant of interment survivors.

“We have not been historically involved in our culture and our community and it’s because we were forced away from our people, our homes,” said another descendant of survivors Megan Wray.

As the monument officially opened in Victoria, 15 viewing parties were being held in communities across Canada.

Calendars and leaves have turned to autumn and the days are getting shorter, but the fall forecast for southern Manitoba looks delightful, Dave Phillips says.

Actually, the emeritus climatologist with Environment Canada says "the weather looks delightfully boring."

"I mean, every day looks the same … dry and sunny and warm," Phillips told CBC Manitoba Information Radio host Marcy Markusa on Friday.

There's a chance of showers Friday and possibly into Saturday, "but after that, my gosh, you could wake up next Monday and say, 'Hey, let's go golfing on Thursday,' and you know you'll get the weather you expected," Phillips said.

Of course, lots of sunshine and clear skies also bring a greater chance of frost overnight, which some neighbourhoods experienced Thursday night into Friday.

And there's a strong possibility of more frost next week, Phillips said.

"We see a couple of nights where the temperature will fall kind of near that zero mark," he said, but we're already past due.

"We rarely get out of September without a frost in Winnipeg, so it was a little bit of a break there," Phillips said.

"Overall, I mean, this is just a gift that you're getting for this part of October. This fall looks gorgeous, and you can thank El Niño for that."

A strong or super El Niño started developing in the southern Pacific Ocean in late August and is expected to disrupt global weather patterns in the months ahead.

The warmest and strongest El Niño events on record were in 2015-16, 1997-98, 1982-83 and now the developing 2026 event, Environment Canada says.

The 1997-98 event led to the second-warmest winter in Winnipeg since records began in 1872. Although it was at the tail end of El Niño, November 2016 smashed records for its warmth in the city.

A super El Niño doesn't mean a fall or winter will topple records, though. The 1982-83 prompted only the eighth warmest winter on record in the city, but still, it was the eighth warmest in 110 years of record keeping.

That makes Phillips fairly confident in predicting this fall won't be fleeting.

"I mean, I wouldn't necessarily bet the family farm or the fishing fleet on it, but my gosh, it's about as guaranteed as you're going to get in the weather business," he said.

"It doesn't mean you're not going to get snow on the pumpkin, but it doesn't destroy the look and the feel of fall. It's good sweater weather."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Darren Bernhardt has been with CBC Manitoba since 2009 and specializes in offbeat and local history stories. He is the author of two bestselling books: The Lesser Known: A History of Oddities from the Heart of the Continent, and Prairie Oddities: Punkinhead, Peculiar Gravity and More Lesser Known Histories.

Game Preview

Eventful offseason the Bruins had, right? Definitely some gambles, certainly some headscratchers, but I think it’s helped the team a little bit!

And then we get to their foe.

I understand we have Winnipeg enthusiasts in our commentariat, so I am going to make this clear; this ain’t about you. I am pointing the venom I have for this team strictly at the laundry. Because I know how fired up Jets fans are. How happy you guys are to have your records back and to have a real team at the Canada Life Place or whatever it’s called now.

…So imagine how frustrating it must be for 20 years of “It’s So Good For the Game” to be rewarded with futility and nearly identical playoff success in spite of ALL the advantages; richest man in canada owning them, decent building, passionate fanbase, basically nobody asking any really hard questions of anybody. And they turn around and have Ondrej Pavelec as goaltender for years. Have that whole Evander Kane thing blow up. Fail to attract any talent that’s meaningful without drafting them first.

Look, it doesn’t help that under the hood the Jets are pretty trash; 22nd in the league in CF% and 24th in the league in CF/60; putting them down with the Rangers and Canucks. They don’t really have the puck much and are relying on transition chances a lot…as well as their goaltender, who they do not have. I’m predisposed to look at teams like that and just scrunching up my nose and snarling out a “LYING” like that cat in Saga. I’ve seen that bill come due far too often to believe in it all the way anymore. I think they’re due for a very, very bad year.

At least they have a good goaltende-oh. Well.

Boston meanwhile played their first game, looked pretty good the whole way through until they finally scored and then they looked great…and that’s kind of it. There’s nothing but good vibes as a Bruins fan right now. But they gotta keep that momentum rolling; transition chances with the Jets skating speed is a real threat, and they really need to get a big win to start their season.

As for who wins? that’s why we play the games. Let’s go, Bs!