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This oral history is from an interview conducted by the Oral History cluster of the Landscapes of Injustice project.
Oh it must be my AuntBecause she was born in. Christina
Oh, is there more information about this boat?And it turned out that this boat was actually built by my
Okay, well there is some kind of connection to that.To my family or to other things. So it's quite, quite interesting. And there's an interesting story, and you'll hear more about it from
CoonTown
Oh.You know this is, well I thought anyways, it was a very powerful image of
I think this would make a really interesting poster.So she went with it and did that poster. And it actually won an anti-racism award. So that poster, I can't remember what year it was, but anyways. At that time the province did these multiculturalism awards. Or at the time there were actually more of anti-racism awards. Now, it sort of morphed into multiculturalism awards. You know, we'll see if it changes back to focus around anti-racism instead of multiculturalism. Because there is a nuance, I think, between yes we should celebrate diversity and multiculturalism, but we also need to discuss discrimination. Not just anti-racism, but discrimination in any form.
Oh well we're just looking for the best candidate.And we're saying,
Well, no but we want to at least work towards trying to increase diversity.So that policy still stands within the
Five Chinese workersor
Two Japanese workersand you know, so there wasn't the same acknowledgement of the death of those workers. And that was just the reality of the time. Like I've already said, is that we need to acknowledge that. To say
Well that was wrong, so we should get rid of it.Well I would say
No, we need to acknowledge that and recognize that. And acknowledge that that was wrong and we just don't want to do it anymore.But this whole community has got a lot of history with it, and a lot of it has been preserved—the good and the bad. So our challenge today here in this community is how do we maintain that, how do we sustain that, because we are experiencing growth. We are bucking the trend in the
Oh, retirement community.Well that's not happening here in
Well, you know, if things didn't change, if there wasn't change, we wouldn't have history. We'd just be living in that period.Change actually, I guess, creates history. So we just need to figure out how do we sustain it and still have change that is going to benefit the community. I think that that's not just the little village of
Well they lost their house, they lost furniture, they lost family heirlooms.In the
Oh, this will be for a couple months or something.So they buried a lot of their stuff. But as well as the cemetery that was desecrated, people would go in there and dig up the stuff and take it, right. So as for what the items were, the property that was disposed of or even the dollar values, I personally don't have any idea what that would be, even for my parent’s immediate families. I guess during the
Oh well, there needs to be more compensation.Because I don't know how you would calculate it, and whether or not there would be any political will to do that, anyways. Because it's been done. But it was interesting that those, that the people that really drove the
Well no, we just need to fit in. We don't need to be in the spotlight,or whatever. But yeah, it was a big thing. Recently, I was watching something on TV about it and they were interviewing a lot of the people that were a part of the