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Fred Wei-han Houn (later Fred Ho) was born in Palo Alto, California, in 1957. During his childhood, he was discriminated against at school because of his Chinese background. In his adolescence, he broke away from assimilation and explored issues of racial power and discrimination.

He completed an undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1979 and invested his time in political and social activism, founding the East Coast Asian Student Union and the Asian American Resource Workshop in the late 1970s.

In 1981, he moved to New York to focus on his music career. He led the Asian American Arts Ensemble and formed the Afro-Asian Music Ensemble in New York. Fred was an active member of the Asian American community and often lectured at various institutions on Asian American affairs.

Fred died on April 12, 2014, in New York.

For a full biography, see the Fred Ho Papers, University of Connecticut Archives and Special Collections.

Jim Wong-Chu was a writer, photographer, historian, radio producer, community organizer and activist, editor, and literary and cultural engineer. He was born in 1949 in Hong Kong. In 1953, he was sent to live with this aunt and uncle in Canada as a "paper son", a term which referred to the practice of children who immigrated to the Canada by using real or falsified identification papers of relatives living in Canada. He was sent back to live with his parents in Hong Kong in 1957 out of concern that his paper son identity might be discovered by government authorities. However he returned to live with his aunt and uncle in Canada in 1961.

He attended Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University of Art + Design) with a focus on photography and design from 1975-1981. He also attended the University of British Columbia for creative writing from 1985-1987.

He worked as a letter carrier for the Canada Post from 1975 until his retirement in 2013. However he also worked as an associate editor for Douglas and McIntyre and as an associate editor for Arsenal Pulp Press. He also did consulting work for various community organizations as well as film and television productions and literary publications.

He was a founding member of various community and cultural organizations including: Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop (ACWW), Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society/explorASIAN, the Pender Guy Radio Program, Asia Canadian Performing Arts Resource (ACPAR), Ricepaper magazine, and literASIAN: A Festival of Pacific Rim Asian Canadian Writing.

In addition to founding many community and cultural organizations, he was also involved in explorAsian (Vancouver Asian Heritage Month), Go for Broke Festival, B.C. Sinfonetta Society, Federation of British Columbia Writers, The Chinese Community Library Association, B.C. Heritage Trust and the Chinese Cultural Centre in Vancouver. He also served on juries and advisory panels for various government grants and book prizes including the Vancouver Book Prize, B.C. Book Prize, and Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, and Multiculturalism Canada publishing grants.

He was the recipient of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal, the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal from the Department of Canadian Heritage, and the Canada Post Silver Postmark Award.

Selected Written Publications: Inspection of a House Paid in Full (author), Chinatown Ghosts (author), A Brief History of Asian North America (author), Strike the Wok: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Fiction (co-editor), Inalienable Rice: A Chinese and Japanese Canadian Anthology (contributor), Many-Mouthed Birds: Contemporary Writing by Chinese Canadians (co-editor), Millennium Messages: An Anthology of Asian Canadian Writing (contributor), and Swallowing Clouds: An Anthology of Chinese-Canadian Poetry (co-editor). He has also had written works published in West Coast Review, Bridge, Mainstream, New Shoots, Asianadian, and Shift Current Anthology.

Selected Photograph Publications and Exhibitions: The B.C. Photographer (publication), Mainstream (publication), Asianadian (publication), Inalienable Rice: A Chinese and Japanese Anthology (book), and Yellow Peril: New World Asians (exhibit).

Jim Wong-Chu passed away July 11, 2017.

Joy Nozomi Kogawa (nee Nakayama) was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1935 to Japanese Canadian parents, Gordon Goichi Nakayama and Lois Masui Nakayama. In addition to the honorary degrees she received from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute and the University of Lethbridge in 1991, Kogawa has been granted degrees from Simon Fraser University, Laurentian University, and the University of British Columbia. She won many awards for Obasan including the Books in Canada First Novel Award, Canadian Authors Fiction Award, and the Notable Book Award by American Library Association. She also published a children' s book based on Obasan, Naomi's Road, in 1986, which was later adapted for a play. She was awarded the Order of Canada in 1986.

Maxine Louie was a physiotherapist at Toronto Women’s College Hospital and Bridgepoint Health.

She resides in her retirement in Toronto.

May Seung Jew is a poet and editor. She is the co-editor of Living & Growing in Canada: A Chinese Canadian Perspective, and her works have been featured in anthologies, such as Another Way to Dance: Contemporary Asian Poetry from Canada and the United States.

Masaoka Osamu has worked as a translator.

Maryka Omatsu was born in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1948.

She earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto and graduated from Osgoode Hall Law School. After graduating, she practiced criminal, human rights, and administrative law in Toronto.

Maryka was a founding member of Sodan-kai, an organization whose goal was to educate Japanese Canadians in Toronto about the redress movement. Maryka served on the National Redress Committee that negotiated the historic 1988 settlement with the Government of Canada, afterward documenting its events in her award-winning book, Bittersweet Passage. She co-chaired the B.C. Redress campaign in 2022, and the province awarded the Japanese Canadian community one hundred million dollars for decades of racism.

In 1992, Maryka was the first East Asian woman appointed a judge in Canada. As the first Japanese Canadian judge, she has made significant contributions to justice, equity, and advocacy for Japanese Canadians and racialized communities. Maryka co-founded the Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers and has since been recognized for her work, such as being the first Canadian recipient of the American National Asian Pacific Bar Association's Trailblazer Award. She has held teaching appointments across Canada, China, and Japan.

Now semi-retired, Maryka divides her time between Toronto and Vancouver.

Maria Teresa Larrain was born in Chile in 1951 and immigrated to Canada in 1976.

She studied law and drama in Chile and graduated from the Radio and Television Arts Program at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University). Maria participated in several developmental programs across North America, such as the Sundance Film Institute and the Canadian Film Centre. After her studies, she began working as an independent writer-director and was the coordinator of Women Working with Immigrant Women, an umbrella organization for agencies in Toronto.

As an award-winning director, her films reflect living in and moving between Chile and Canada. Her film, Besieged Land, is now part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in New York. While working on her last documentary, she began to lose her vision, inspiring her to create a new documentary about living with blindness and returning to Toronto Metropolitan University to enroll in Critical Disability Studies.

Margaret Walsh Chang has worked as an archivist at the Newfoundland Archives and has been secretary of the Chinese Association of Newfoundland and Labrador.

M.L. Handa was an associate professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and was the president of the Canadian Asian Studies Association.

He died in 1990.

M.K. Sohail was born in Pakistan in 1952.

He completed a degree in medicine from Khyber Medical College in Pakistan and studied psychiatry at Memorial University, Newfoundland, in 1982.

Sohail worked in numerous psychiatric and general hospitals across Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and Ontario. In 1984, he settled in Whitby, Ontario, to work as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist. Sohail left his job in 1995 to open his own practice called Creative Psychotherapy Clinic.

Sohail is passionate about writing, which includes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. His creative works are often written in Urdu and translated into English, and his professional writings are in English. He has presented papers at professional conferences in various countries.

M.G. Vassanji was born in Kenya on May 30, 1950, to Indian immigrants and raised in Tanzania.

He earned a Bachelor of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a PhD in nuclear physics from the University of Pennsylvania before moving to Canada as a postdoctoral fellow in 1978.

Vassanji worked as a research associate at the University of Toronto. During this period, he developed an interest in medieval Indian literature and began his writing career by co-founding and editing the literary magazine The Toronto South Asian Review (now Mawenzi House). His books have won several awards, such as the Governor General's Prize (2009) for nonfiction, and been translated internationally. Vassanji has given lectures worldwide about writing and his identity.

He currently resides in Toronto.

Lynne Kutsukake was born in Toronto in 1952. During World War II, her parents were subjected to the internment of Japanese Canadians and forced to live in its camps.

Lynne earned a Master's degree in East Asian studies at the University of Toronto, then studied Japanese literature in Japan on a Monbusho scholarship and completed a degree in Library and Information Science. She later attended the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies Creative Writing Program and is an alumna of the Humber School for Writers.

In 1976, Lynne relocated to Tokyo to teach English. During her time there, she studied Japanese literature and began to translate short stories to English. She later returned to Toronto and became the Japanese Studies librarian at the University of Toronto, retiring in 2007.

Lynne is currently a novelist and short story writer. Her debut novel, The Translation of Love, was published in 2016 and received several awards, such as the Canada-Japan Literary Award.

Lise Waxer was born in Toronto on May 30, 1965.

She completed an undergraduate degree in music at the University of Toronto, then earned a master's in ethnomusicology and musicology at York University, as well as completing a PhD at the University of Illinois. During her PhD, she initially researched salsa communities in Toronto and then in Colombia, where she would also wed her husband.

In 1997, she relocated to Hartford, Connecticut, where she taught at Trinity College as a professor of world music. She was an ethnomusicologist of salsa music and respected within the salsa community for her critically acclaimed book, The City of Musical Memory, which traced the development of salsa music, vinyl recordings, and memory in Cali, Colombia. Her book was awarded the Alan Merriam Prize by the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM); however, she never received the prize due to her sudden death from colon cancer on August 13, 2002. SEM would later establish the Lise Waxer Student Paper Prize in her honour.

Leonard Preyra was born in Mumbai, India, 1955 and is the eldest of ten siblings. His family was part of a Catholic minority at the time of rising Hindu nationalism, and the population explosion in India led to measures against large families. To provide a better life for their family and escape religious persecution, Leonard’s mother wrote a letter that was published in the Star. After it appeared, a family in Toronto offered their support, helping them immigrate to Canada in 1968.

Leonard earned a PhD in political science from Queen’s University. As a social democrat and activist, he first experienced working with human rights through his position as a research analyst for a royal commission looking into illegal activities of the RCMP. He has held teaching appointments at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax.

Leonard was a member of the Nova Scotia New Democratic Party and was first elected in the 2006 general election in an open seat, then named the Ministerial Assistant for the Office of Immigration in June 2009, and later appointed to the Executive Council of Nova Scotia as Minister of Communities, Culture, and Heritage in 2012. Leonard was defeated when he ran for re-election in the 2013 general election.

Lenore G. Apacible earned a business administration degree from the University of the East, Philippines and attended the University of Toronto. She was an active member of the Sampaguita Cultural Heritage and Civic Organization, a Filipino community association.

Lee Wai-Man holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto and has researched Chinese labour movements in Canada, with works published in Rikka magazine.

Myrna Lakshmi Gill was born in Manila, Philippines, on May 24, 1943. Her father was Punjabi Sikh, and her mother was Spanish Filipina.

After graduating from high school, she relocated to the United States and earned an undergraduate degree from Western Washington University in Bellingham. In 1964, she completed graduate studies at the University of British Columbia and began but did not complete a PhD at the University of New Brunswick. Gill later received a Bachelor of Education from Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, where she also held teaching appointments and has taught English in Canada, Hong Kong, and England.

Between 1976 and 1988, she lived in Sackville, New Brunswick, where she met and wed her husband. The couple had three children together. Unhappy with the community’s size and struggling to live as a writer in a small town, she separated from her husband in 1988 and moved to British Columbia with her three children.

Most of her work is autobiographical, often reflecting on her relationships with her parents as well as her experiences as an immigrant. Her writings span various books and have been published internationally in anthologies, literary magazines, workshops, conferences, and newspaper articles. She was one of the two women poets who founded the League of Canadian Poets in 1966.

She currently resides on Burnaby Mountain in British Columbia.

Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta was born in Sri Lanka in 1954 and is a writer based in Toronto.

His work, spanning poetry and journalism, examines the intersections of economics, race, and class, and traces the historical and cultural connections linking Sri Lanka with the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Krisantha has published two books on poetry, and his writings have been featured in numerous anthologies.

He coordinated the Labour Council of Metropolitan Toronto’s (now Toronto and York Region Labour Council) Developing Strategies against Racism in the Workplace, 1985, which brought together Black, Chinese, and South Asian trade unionists. Krisantha has organized support for struggles against racism in the workplace, such as the Ad Hoc Committee for Wei Fu’s Complaint.

Kevin Wan attended Chinese school at St. Matthew’s Church in Toronto.

Kerri Sakamoto was born in Toronto in 1960. She grew up in the mostly white suburban Etobicoke of the 1960s and 70s.

Her family was subjected to the internment of Japanese Canadians and forced to live in its camps, losing the homes and businesses they worked hard to acquire. Kerri’s parents often avoided talking about Japanese internment camps and their Japanese culture and history, as the family had been subjected to racial taunts throughout their lives. Kerri was unaware of the internment camps until she read about them in a magazine article at the age of twenty and subsequently worked with Joy Kogawa in the redress movement for two years.

She studied English and French at the University of Toronto and completed a Master’s in English from New York University, where she began writing her award-winning debut novel, The Electrical Field. She is the recipient of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for best first book and was a finalist for a Governor General’s Award. Her novels often explore the experience of Japanese Canadians and are published in translation internationally. Kerri has also written essays on visual art, screenplays and collaborated with filmmakers.

She has served as a judge of the Governor General’s Literary Awards, a member of the Canadian jury at the Toronto International Film Festival, and a Distinguished Visitor at University College in the University of Toronto.

She works and resides in Toronto.

Koto Kanno was born in 1951.

She earned a Bachelor of Sociology from Jochi (Sophia) University, Japan, and a Master’s in Sociology from the University of Toronto. Kanno began as a researcher at Jochi University and at Hitotsubashi University, where she carried out sociological field research projects.

In 1982, Kanno joined UNESCO, where she would spend her decades-long career. She started as an associate expert, then as an assistant program specialist for social and human sciences for Asia and the Pacific, later transferring to the Bureau of Extrabudgetary Relations at the headquarters in France. She was then placed in the education sector as a program specialist and desk officer, and in 2003, appointed head of office in Kathmandu and representative to Nepal.

Kanno has several publications focusing on the fields of social change, gender and development cooperation, and has delivered several lectures on issues of gender equality.

Joyce Gee immigrated to Canada with her family at an early age.

Joyce earned an undergraduate degree in science from the University of Toronto and completed a Master's degree in family and child studies at the University of Guelph.

A passion for working with children led her to pursue a career in it. She worked as a director at Queen’s Park Child Care Centre and at Ryerson Public School, where she introduced the Fashion/Ryerson seamless day program. After, Joyce would continue to work as a manager and supervisor across several childcare centres across Toronto. For over two decades, she has held teaching appointments at George Brown College and now works in faculty and fieldwork.

Johnny Fong has taught high school in Vancouver, BC.

Jin Tan attended the Department of History and Philosophy of Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE).

Jean Yoon was born in Champaign, Illinois, on May 4, 1962, and subsequently raised in Toronto.

Yoon began her acting career in the 1980s but soon quit in frustration over the lack of opportunities for Asian Canadians and went on to complete an undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto in 1989.

For a decade, she advocated for more opportunities for actors of colour and would not return to the theatre scene until 1991. Yoon created her own theatre company called Loud Mouth Asian Babes, which committed to the development of new Canadian drama by, for, and about Asian women. She wrote and produced plays characterized by aggressively irreverent humour, with a particular focus on the Korean diaspora. She has written several poems and essays, including The Yoko Ono Project, an award-winning multimedia performance art comedy.

Yoon is best known for originating the role of Umma in the 2011 play Kim's Convenience and in the award-winning CBC Television series adapted from the play, for which she won an ACTRA Award (2017) and a Canadian Screen Award (2022).

In 2022, Yoon was designated an honorary ambassador on the 60th anniversary of the diplomatic relations between Canada and South Korea.

She currently resides and works in Toronto.

Jasemine Hosai-Dumlao is a freelance writer based in Regina.

Jamshed Mavalwala was a professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto and an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Saugar (now Dr. Hari Singh Gour University) in India.

He was the first Canadian to be elected president of the International Dermatoglyphics Association and served on the Advisory Council on Multiculturalism and Citizenship, notably with the board of The Urban Alliance on Race Relations. He was also the vice-president of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) Canada, a UN non-governmental agency.

He died on November 10, 2023.

James Strecker was born on April 15, 1953. He earned a Master’s in drama at the University of Toronto.

James has been active in the Hamilton arts community and is best known as a journalist, poet, and photographer. Several of his works have been featured globally and in notable Canadian publications, such as the National Library of Canada’s website.

He has served as a Poet-in-Residence on the CBC national radio, giving him the opportunity to host readings and workshops internationally. For his contributions to the arts and professional achievements, he was the recipient of the City of Hamilton Arts Award in 1992.

James has held teaching appointments at Sheridan College in Hamilton, lecturing on media studies for over 30 years.

Jack Seto completed a Bachelor’s degree in photographic arts at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University) and a diploma in book and magazine publishing from Centennial College.

He is a freelance photographer and has been active in the community by doing volunteer work.

Hoanh T. Ngo is a past president of the Vietnamese Association of Toronto. The association was established in 1972 to assist immigrants integrate into Canadian Society, promote racial harmony, and preserve Vietnamese culture in Canada.

Ho Hon Leung was born in 1961. He completed an undergraduate and a Master’s degree in sociology at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, later earned a PhD in sociology at McGill University.

Leung holds teaching appointments in the Department of Sociology at the State University of New York and is the chairman of the Centre for Social Science Research. He is a co-founder of 4C5M (肆師伍門), a non-profit and independent research studio analyzing urban space and social life. His recently published papers are on Hong Kong-style cafés (港式茶歺庁) in relation to place identity, nostalgia, and their potential in the Belt and Road Initiative.

Leung is currently based in Oneonta, USA, and often spends his free time as a photographer, utilizing photography to enhance his research projects and as an extension of his art form.

Himani Bannerji was born in Bangladesh in 1942.

Her area of study was in English, completing a Bachelor’s degree from Viswa-Bharati University and a Master’s degree from Jadavpur University before relocating to Canada in 1969 to pursue a PhD at the University of Toronto.

Bannerji is best known for her non-fiction writing that explores Marxism, feminism, racism, and colonial India and has held teaching appointments as an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at York University.

Bannerji’s writings are featured in numerous publications, such as Rungh Magazine, a Canadian multidisciplinary space for creative explorations, committed to conversations by and about people of colour.

Helen Koyama is a Sansei writer and artist based in Toronto. During World War II, her family was subjected to the internment of Japanese Canadians and forced to live in its camps.

Deeply involved with the Japanese Canadian community in Toronto, she worked for The New Canadian, an English-language newspaper published by and for the Japanese Canadian community. She published her poetry in the newspaper and in the pioneering Asian Canadian anthology, Inalienable Rice (1979), and contributed illustrations for Rikka and Ricepaper magazine.

Helen and her sister, Annie, founded Koyama Press in 2007. The award-winning comic book publisher operated in Toronto until 2021.

Gordon Takehara graduated from the East Asian Studies program at the University of Toronto. He has worked as a freelance journalist in Boston.

Garrick Chu was born in Vancouver, BC, on July 15, 1950. Among a generation of community organizers in and around the city’s Chinatown, he was active as a writer, film producer and director.

Garrick was an editor of Inalienable Rice: A Chinese and Japanese Canadian Anthology, one of the first anthologies of Asian Canadian poetry and fiction. With Sean Gunn and Gordon Mark, he produced and edited Gum Shan Po, a Chinese Canadian tabloid-style newspaper.

Garrick died on December 30, 1979 in Vancouver.

Gina Wong has worked in Toronto for immigrant women’s rights, including with the Riverdale Immigrant Women’s Centre.

Germaine Wong was born in China in the Toisan region of Guangdong province, in 1950.

Her father had journeyed to Canada to build a better life for the family there; it wasn’t until Germaine was four years old that she and her mother were reunited with him in Canada.

The family settled in Verdun, Quebec, where they ran a laundry business. Growing up as a minority in the working class borough, Germaine struggled to navigate multiple religions, languages, and cultures in the face of racial discrimination.

An interest in film led Germaine to pursue study of it at Concordia University. Shortly after, she joined the National Film Board (NFB) where she would spend her 30-year career. She started in a cataloguing position, then joined the management team, later being promoted to producer. The documentaries and feature films she produced have been recognized with a Genie Award (2002) and the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes International Film Festival (2001). She retired from the NFB in 2007.

Gerald Chan came to Canada in 1972.

Gerald Baba attended Malvern Collegiate and has worked as a teacher with the Toronto District School Board.

Garry Engkent was born in China in the Sunwui county of Guangdong province. He immigrated to Canada in the 1950s, completing a PhD in English at the University of Toronto, after which he taught English, creative writing and English literature at Toronto Metropolitan University and at the University of Toronto.

Garry explores the Chinese immigrant experience through creative writing. He is author of the much-anthologized, Why My Mother Can’t Speak English, and a frequent contributor to Ricepaper magazine.

In his retirement, his writing of fiction has branched out to horror and science fiction genres.

Emmanuel Lacaba was born in the Philippines, on December 10, 1948.

He attended Ateneo de Manila University, after which he lectured at the University of the Philippines. Emmanuel worked as a copywriter and contributor to various news publications. Deeply involved with labour and activist movements, he was a well-known journalist often referred to as the “poet warrior” of the Philippines. His writing reflects the socio-political climate of the Philippines through the 1960s.

In 1971, he joined the movement for national democracy after the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. In 1972, he participated in a strike in Pasig before it was violently dispersed, and was assaulted, arrested, and briefly incarcerated.

He was killed on March 18, 1976 after an encounter in Asuncion, Davao del Norte.

Eileen Duh graduated in 1975 with a Bachelor’s degree in English from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and later completed a Master’s degree in comparative literature at the University of Toronto in 1977.

Eileen lives and works in Toronto.

Edy Goto was born in Toronto and completed a Bachelor’s degree in film at York University. While staying in Japan on a student exchange program in 1973, her interest in the intersection of Japanese Canadian and Japanese cultures broadened.

The focus of her work was on the Japanese Canadian community and issues of racism. In 1976, she joined the Japanese Canadian Centennial Society as the general secretary and subsequently joined the Annex, which made Japanese Canadian information, discussion, and art available to the community.

Edy created Kodomo no Tame in the 1980s, a playgroup for Japanese Canadian preschoolers and their families. The program was formed in reaction after community elders advised that it wasn’t necessary or important to teach Yonsei, fourth-generation Japanese Canadians, about Japanese culture. Edy disagreed and felt a need to inspire children about what it meant to be Japanese Canadian.

Later, Edy became a lawyer and was called to the Ontario Bar in 1994. Her interest in her practice is in the areas of human rights and family law.

Together with her husband, they attended several Sodan Kai meetings during the early days of the redress movement. The couple raised two children together.

E.Y. Sayo was a member of the Montreal-based anti-Marcos martial law movement, an active, ongoing effort by Filipino diaspora organizations and allies to oppose the legacy of the late dictator, Ferdinand Marcos Sr., and the presidency of his son, Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.

E.A. Ordonez taught English in the Philippines before immigrating to Canada. In Montreal, he is an instructor at Concordia University and was a member of the anti-Marcos martial law movement, an active, ongoing effort by Filipino diaspora organizations and allies to oppose the legacy of the late dictator, Ferdinand Marcos Sr., and the presidency of his son, Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.

Dora Nipp is a descendant of Chinese railway workers and Chinese head taxpayers. She completed undergraduate studies at the University of British Columbia and pursued doctoral studies on Overseas Chinese as a Common-wealth Scholar at the University of Hong Kong in 1985.

Upon returning to Canada, she became a compliance officer with the Ontario Human Rights Commission and later served as CEO of the Multicultural History Society of Ontario (MHSO). Dora focused on the stories of immigrants and worked to preserve a collection of oral history interviews that documented their lives. She expanded the acquisitions of the MHSO and helped establish an oral history museum (OHM) in Toronto. The OHM was closed to the public when the MHSO relocated its operations.

As a historian, Dora has produced various publications on Canada’s Chinese communities including directing the National Film Board of Canada’s Under the Willow Tree, a documentary on pioneer Chinese women in Canada.

In 2004, she received the Rolex Award for Enterprise as an Associate Laureate for Cultural Heritage, becoming the only Canadian to receive this award. Dora is the first recipient of the University of Toronto’s Chinese Canadian History Fellowship.

Diane Yip earned a Master's degree in environmental studies from York University. She specializes in the areas of group dynamics, counselling, women’s studies, and community development.

David Fujino was born in the internment camp of Greenwood, British Columbia, on January 28, 1945. He studied English Language & Literature at the University of Toronto but did not complete a degree.

Fujino was a fixture of Toronto’s Japanese Canadian community and the arts scene as a visual artist, painter, photographer, trumpet player, poet, and actor, often exploring post-internment Japanese Canadian identity and culture in his work. As a Sansei artist, he wrote poetry in the form of concrete visual poetry.

His writings have been published in numerous anthologies and journals globally. Through the 1970s, he wrote for Tora, a magazine published by the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre. In the 1990s, Fujino continued to be involved with important community initiatives such as the Toronto Chapter National Association of Japanese Canadians (NAJC) Art Committee, Weener Matsuri, and the Ai Symposium and worked on the follow-up to Aiko Suzuki’s directory of Japanese Canadians in the Arts—the Resource Listings about Japanese Canadians, which he revised in 1996.

From 2012 to 2017, he was a columnist for The Bulletin, providing a Toronto Japanese-Canadian perspective to the west coast community. For several years, he served on the board of the Toronto NAJC, including as president from 2014 to 2015.

Fujino died in Toronto on May 6, 2017.

Daniel Magosaburo is a freelance critic and reviewer.