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“These are the stories that get lost over time”
by by Sarah Buck, Culture Writer, The Ubyssey, 1/20/2006

MOTHER TONGUE: A WOMEN’S HISTORY OF ETHNIC CANADA

After years of living and working around the world, documentary filmmaker Susan Poizner returned to Canada in 2002 less than thrilled at the prospect of leaving behind the wealth of cultural experiences that defined her life abroad. It took a fellow Canadian traveler to point out that Canada is itself defined by its variety of cultural groups.

With this inspiration and funding from Heritage Canada, Poizner set out to document some of the untold stories of Canada’s women pioneers in a 13-part series entitled Mother Tongue: A Women’s History of Ethnic Canada, premiering this month on Channel M.

“These are the stories that get lost over time,” says Poizner, who wrote and directed the series. “[It’s] partly because women are modest. There are a lot of incredible women in our country, and I just want to help tell their stories,” she says.

At the launch of the series last week at the Vancouver Museum, Poizner announced that both episodes featuring women from British Columbia have been made part of BC school curriculum.

The first, “Triumph Over Internment,” premieres January 22, and tells the story of Kimiko Murakami, who in 1896 became the first Japanese baby born in the fishing village of Steveston, BC.

Murakami was a big part of her family’s success as commercial fishermen in what was then one of the busiest fishing ports in the world. But after Kimiko’s younger sibling fell off the boat and drowned, the family traded in fishing for a farm on Salt Spring Island.

The farm produced strawberries, asparagus, and eggs until the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbour when Canada joined the United States in declaring war on Japan, and the Murakamis became part of the 22,000 Japanese-Canadians forced to leave their homes for internment camps.

Kitagawa says her mother believed the “custodian of enemy properties,” an official overseeing of the confiscation of their property when he said: “Don’t worry, when you come back, not one chopstick will be missing from your house.”

But the interned Murakamis got word their farm had been sold by the Canadian government. Kitagawa says her mother wasted no time in planning the family’s return to Salt Spring regardless. “We were always taught that bitterness always holds us back,” says Kitagawa.

A profile of another British Columbia woman, Vancouver-born social activist Mary Lee Chan, airs on January 29. Chan was the third daughter of twelve children to Chinese parents who came to Vancouver hoping to strike it rich during the Klondike gold rush in the late 1800s.

Chan’s parents were forced to move the family back to China after more than twenty years in Canada, at a time when it seemed impossible to make a living in Vancouver. But Chan was determined to return. After meeting and marrying a Chinese man, she came back to Vancouver on her own, six months pregnant. Chan worked as a seamstress to raise enough money to bring her husband over to join her.

Daughter Shirley Chan says her mother’s resolve came from a belief “there’s always a way to work out the problem.” In “Taking on City Hall,” Shirley Chan talks about Mary Lee Chan’s determination to rally the community against the demolition of their Vancouver neighbourhood in the 1960s.

Both episodes are effective in tracing the upheaval experienced by these women trying to find their place in the face of events that seemed to conspire against them. But perhaps the most valuable part of Mother Tongue is their daughters’ insight into their mothers’ characters and legacy. Mother Tongue gives the viewer a strong sense of how these women’s lives continue to inspire their families and their communities.

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This series of educational videos was made possible with funding from

Mother Tongue: A woman's history of ethnic Canada is a 13-part TV series that documents Canada's multicultural history from a female perspective. Each program tells the story of a notable woman in one of Canada's communities, including a Black fugitive slave, an Acadian mail order bride, and an Icelandic suffragette. mother, tongue, woman, history, ethnic, Canada, video, DVD, TV, tele, television, series, show, think, stock, inc., canada, ontario, british, columbia, quebec, education, school