Food Full of Life: Eating with the Cycle of the Seasons, memoirs and recipes
Ann-Lee and Gordon Switzer
No ordinary cookbook, Food Full of Life brings the seasons of the year into the kitchen. Proceeding month by month, we learn what is happening on a typical homestead in Coastal British Columbia and then what dishes could be prepared at that time of year. Based on produce that can be grown locally, the dishes are sourced from around the world and from the kitchen-tested imagination of the Switzer cooks.
The vegetarian-forward recipes are easy to follow, listing ingredients readily available, followed by step-by-step instructions. Each month highlights basic meal categories: breakfast, grain, salad, soup, entrées, desserts, drinks. The text is enlivened with drawings, paintings and photos throughout. Comments preceding many of the recipes tell anecdotes from the authors’ childhood memories, travels and culinary adventures.
Website: http://www.tijeanpress.ca/
ISBN: 978-1-896627-34-2
GATEWAY TO PROMISE: Canada’s First Japanese Community
Ann-Lee and Gordon Switzer
Canada’s first Japanese community grew up in Victoria, the first Pacific port of call for Canada before Vancouver was even the name of a place. Here for the first time, the history of Victoria’s Japanese community is recounted, beginning in the mid-1880s. In the early days, Victoria, British Columbia was the “Gateway to Promise” for Japanese immigrants.
Website: http://www.tijeanpress.ca/
ISBN: 978-1-896627-21-2
SAKURA IN STONE: Victoria’s Japanese Legacy
Ann-Lee and Gordon Switzer
SAKURA IN STONE: VICTORIA’S JAPANESE LEGACY is the second book on the subject of Japanese Canadian pioneers to be released by Gordon and Ann-Lee Switzer. This new work contains myth-shattering new research to give an answer to who was the first Japanese immigrant to reach Canada and stay to make Canada his home.
The book is divided into three sections. The first review and updates the history of the Japanese Canadian presence in British Columbia’s Capital City. The second part names the first true settler from Japan to reach Victoria and make Canada his home. The last section contains stories of some of the Japanese pioneers buried in Ross Bay Cemetery: their adventures, achievements and sometimes tragic deaths.
Website: http://www.tijeanpress.ca/
ISBN: 978-1-896627-22-9
Images of Internment
Dr. Henry Shimizu
In 1999, 12 friends met for dinner at my sister Grace Sakamoto’s home in Toronto. After dinner we had a frank discussion about our experiences in the New Denver Internment Camp, during 1942-1946.The consensus was a bitter/sweet episode in our lives , but with a major influence on our future career and live style. Following this meeting, I painted 27 oil paintings about my impressions of the life style of teenagers in the Internment Camp in New Denver , 1942-1946. The paintings were completed in 2002. An Opening exhibit of the paintings with explanatory panels was held at the Edmonton Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre on March 23, 2002 – exactly 60 years from the day we left Prince Rupert to begin our internment. In the summer of 2008, this book was created, using the paintings with stories and to complete the story, a prologue and an epilogue.
Website: http://www.tijeanpress.ca/
ISBN: 987-1-896627-16-8
The Return of a Shadow
Rubery Book Award (England) – Finalist
Kunio Yamagishi
A poignant novel of a Japanese-Canadian internment camp and how it affected the life of an internee after he was released from the camp.
Eizo Osada had his shadow, always there inside his head, ready, unbidden, to announce itself. And it did; criticising, asking awkward questions, prompting. It had been there since he left Japan for Canada over forty years ago. He had left his wife and three young sons, one of them only two years old, to earn money to maintain the family back home.
Then Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. A worried Canadian government interned Japanese people. Eizo spent the next few years in camps. After his release his shadow questioned why he did not go back to his family, but there was always a reason why he could not. Then there was the last letter from his wife twenty-three years ago asking him to stay in Canada as there was no employment in war-torn Japan. So he stayed, living a lonely life, saving so he could send money back.
Now, approaching retirement, the time had come to return to the wife and family he had never known. Little did he know what awaited him and how he in turn would become a shadow. There are many scenes from Vancouver Island.
Buy on: Amazon.ca.
Local news: Comox Valley Record article
About the author (2018)
Born in Fukushima, Japan, Kunio Yamagishi graduated from Hosei University, Tokyo, and immigrated to Canada. He worked at the Consulate General of Japan in Toronto, also in Toronto, Tokyo, and New York’s Wall Street as an investment banker. His publications include short stories, magazine articles, and academic translation work.
Bibliographic information
Title: The Return of a Shadow
Author: Kunio Yamagishi
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers Limited, 2018
ISBN: 1786937158, 9781786937155
Length: 382 pages
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