ケリー・フレック

TORONTO — On Nisei Masako Okawara‘s birthday, she looked out the window to see her two granddaughters and their families in the parking lot of her North Scarborough condo next to a sign reading, “Happy 100th Birthday!”

The rest of the day was filled with phone calls, flower deliveries, and a zoom video conference call with friends and family singing Happy Birthday, while she blew out the candle on an ice cream treat. Her five grandchildren made virtual flowers, since Okawara loves flowers, as one of the original members of the Toronto Ikenobo Ikebana Society.

It was not the way ...

TORONTO — Mariko Kawano’s apiary, Heiwa Honey, is a project three generations in the making, and combines her Japanese heritage with her passion for beekeeping.

Heiwa means peace and harmony in Japanese and is the philosophy Kawano brings to her beekeeping.

While showing her apiary on the rooftop of the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, she pauses to help a bee stuck on its back. Gently, she guides the bee back to the opening of the hive, where it flies in and continues on its way.

“Even just one bee, it’s a living, breathing thing that, to me, is still ...

Growing up, Sarah Kuhn rarely saw characters that looked like her, now she changing that.

Author Sarah Kuhn is creating stories with Asian American girls as the heroes of their own stories, either as literal superheroes or regular girls forging their own paths.

Growing up as a Hapa, Japanese American, Kuhn rarely saw characters that looked like her in the stories she loved, sci-fi/fantasies or romantic comedies. Even more rare were stories where Asian girls and women were the heroes of their own stories, and not just characters to be desired, or tragic figures that help the hero learn ...

Author Gyo Fujikawa‘s books have been read, shared and loved by generations of families all over the world for over 50 years.

Fujikawa began with a blank page and created children’s books that imagined a bigger, better world, away from societal constraints of race and gender. Fujikawa’s first book, Babies, was the one of the earliest to feature children of different races interacting with each other. Now Fujikawa’s own, overlooked story is being told in It Began With a Page: How Gyo Fujikawa Drew the Way, a new children’s book written by Kyo Maclear and ...

TORONTO — University of British Columbia student Anne Canute has fond memories of her grandmother encouraging her and her cousins to create and tell their own silly and funny stories as children.

Years later, Canute worked with her grandmother, activist and award-winning author Joy Kogawa, on a different kind of story. The two collaborated on the script for the new, experimental storytelling video game called East of the Rockies.

The app, which is a game that can be used on a smartphone, tells the fictional story of 17 year old Yuki, who is forced to leave her home for an internment ...