An open letter from the Japanese Canadian / Nikkei community against 105 Keefer
Neighbours in solidarity
Today we’re featuring an open letter against 105 Keefer from the Japanese Canadian / Nikkei community below. Original letter here. To sign the open letter, please sign here.
Before you jump down to read the letter…If you haven’t written your letter to the City yet, please write in as soon as you can this week here. Then attend the community rally on Thurs, May 25 at 4:30pm (email back to help volunteer!), and sign up to speak at the hearing next Mon, May 29 here.
An Open Letter from the Japanese Canadian / Nikkei Community Against Beedie’s Proposed Development at 105 Keefer
May 21, 2023
We write as Japanese Canadian / Nikkei residents of Vancouver, a city built on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, sḵwx̱wú7mesh & səlilwətaɬ lands. However, as a result of the Government of Canada’s coercive policies of dispersal following the Second World War, many of us also write as Japanese Canadian / Nikkei people living elsewhere in BC, Canada, and even across the world. We insist that you hear us—all of us—and receive this letter as evidence that we retain a connection not just to each other, but to BC, to Vancouver, and to the Downtown Eastside, including our historic home of Paueru Gai (“Powell Town”) and our neighbours’ home of Chinatown.
We write, then, as both historic and present-day neighbours of the Chinatown community.
We stand in solidarity with the Chinatown community: we oppose Beedie’s most recent proposal for development at 105 Keefer.
WE OPPOSE BEEDIE’S PROPOSAL because it does not serve the Chinatown and/or low-income community. Located in the Keefer Triangle, the site at 105 Keefer is in the heart of Chinatown, adjacent to culturally significant landmarks such as the Chinatown Memorial Monument and Chinatown Memorial Square, which commemorate the contributions of Chinese-Canadian labourers and veterans. The site is also right across the street from the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, a refuge of peace and tranquility in a bustling—and already dense—downtown core. Beedie’s proposed development for 105 Keefer—that is, an enormous block of 111 market-rate condos—would fly in the face of the honour, commemorative nature, cultural context, and natural refuge that these neighbouring aspects of Chinatown provide. In addition, the Chinatown community has voiced its opposition to Beedie’s proposals for condo development on this site resoundingly, and durationally. The very fact that Beedie proposed market-rate condo development on this site again, after years of push-back and, in many cases, outright rejection from the Chinatown community, demonstrates Beedie’s disrespect for Chinatown as a neighbourhood as well as the people who make up its community.
WE OPPOSE BEEDIE’S PROPOSAL because it does not meet the City of Vancouver’s commitments, including its commitments to justice. Beedie’s proposal violates the City of Vancouver’s own guidelines and commitments for fostering and protecting Chinatown. Beedie’s proposed condo development for 105 Keefer is contextually inappropriate. Its mass does not adhere to the Chinatown HA-1 Design Policies, which require it to fit into the history, culture, and architecture of the surrounding area. Its height and character do not adhere to the principles outlined in the Downtown Eastside Plan, which not only prioritize low- to mid-rise building height, but insist that new development be informed by the heritage character of the neighbourhood. Further, Beedie’s current proposal for 111 units of market-rate condos (as well as the many preceding proposals) is demonstrably inequitable: Beedie is throwing around their capital weight and their might as a developer against a community and neighbourhood that is already historically and presently shaped by racism and classism. The City’s own understanding of equity (see Equity Framework: Getting Our House in Order), its commitments to anti-racism and cultural redress, and its reiteration of the importance of equity, diversity, and inclusion in the 2022 Corporate Plan, necessitate a robust recognition of the power dynamics at play in the debate over 105 Keefer, rather than their elision in the name of “due process.”
Indeed, Beedie’s proposal does not align with several of the City’s commitments to work toward meaningful justice on this land. Beedie’s proposal commodifies justice and cultural understanding as accessories to a proposed condo development that would ultimately catalyze gentrification in Chinatown at the expense of the Chinatown community, including Chinese seniors, low-income people, and the area’s Indigenous residents. The extent to which this violates the City’s many commitments to justice, including the City’s original Framework for Reconciliation; the City’s current goal of continuing to advance reconciliation (Corporate Plan, p. 16); the City’s 2018 apology to Chinese Canadians for historic wrongdoings (City of Vancouver’s Official Apology to the Chinese Community); and the City’s 2013 apology to Japanese Canadians for complicity in the internment of our community (Apology for City of Vancouver’s Role in the 1942 Internment of Japanese-Canadians) nearly goes without saying.
WE OPPOSE BEEDIE’S PROPOSAL because it does not meet our own commitments to justice. On September 25, 2013, the day that the City shared its long overdue apology to Japanese Canadians, community elder Grace Eiko Thomson, who grew up as a little girl in the historic Powell Street neighbourhood, spoke to Mayor and Council. She said:
As a Japanese Canadian senior, who has for most of her life worked for human rights in our communities, I am very pleased that this Motion, proposed during the City’s proclaimed “Year of Reconciliation,” offers not only an Apology “for failing to protect her residents of Japanese descent” but further pledges to uphold “the principles of human rights and equality now and in the future,” “to ensure such injustices will not happen again to any of its residents. (The Volcano, emphasis original)
Beedie’s proposed condo development is nothing less than the violation of this pledge—the latter part of which (i.e., the further pledge to which Grace refers above), we must add, Grace wrote for the City, to be included in the Motion, because it was she, and not the City, who understood profoundly and intimately, through lived experience, the importance of committing to standing against displacement in and beyond the Japanese Canadian community, then (i.e., in 2013) and in the future.
We therefore oppose Beedie’s proposal for all the reasons listed above, including the violation of the pledge that the City made in its Apology to Japanese Canadians, and because of the sense of justice that we, as a community, have inherited from the very wrongdoing for which you, the City, apologized just ten years ago.
WE CALL ON THE DEVELOPMENT PERMIT BOARD to reject Beedie’s proposal for development on the site at 105 Keefer.
WE CALL ON MAYOR KEN SIM AND CITY COUNCIL to exercise their powers in support of the Development Permit Board, as they reject Beedie’s proposal, and in support of the Chinatown community, as they continue to fight to protect their home and one another.
SIGNED,
Grace Eiko Thomson, Retired Curator and Historian; formerly President, National Association of Japanese Canadians
Angela May, gosei, PhD Candidate, McMaster University
Daniel Iwama
Jane Komori, yonsei, PhD Candidate, University of California Santa Cruz
Nicole Yakashiro, PhD Candidate, UBC
Stéphane Hamade
Sho Yamagushiku
Lily Shinde, Retired Social justice Advocate and Political Grassroots Activist; former Director of Greater Vancouver Japanese Canadian Citizens Association; former Human Rights Committee member; health professional. No more gentrification, revitalization to the communities living there!
Connie Kadota
Ayaka Yoshimizu, University of British Columbia
E. Kage, Artist
Roy Miki, Author, and Professor Emeritus, Simon Fraser University
Kirsten Emiko McAllister, Simon Fraser University
Kathy Shimizu, sansei
A. Murata
Lisa Uyeda
Megan Doell
Jeff Masuda, Right to Remain Collective, University of Victoria
Izumi Sakamoto, University of Toronto
Maryanne Belcher, Nikkei Community
Sherri Kajiwara
Takashi Fujitani, University of Toronto
Lisa Yoneyama, University of Toronto
Eli Oda Sheiner, Coalition of Peers Dismantling the Drug War
Sachiko Takeda-McKee
Lynda Nakashima
Terrie Hamazaki, MA Candidate, University of Gloucestershire, UK
Linda Uyehara Hoffman
H. Kubota
Kiyoko Judy Hanazawa (signing as individual)
Laura Ishiguro
Heidi Hanazawa Root
Carolyn Nakagawa
Ren Ito
Debora O
Noriko Kobayashi
N. Les Murata
Emiko Newman
Laura Madokoro, Department of History, Carleton University
T. Kano
Siyuan Yin, Simon Fraser University
P. Murata, Against the Beedie Development at 105 Keefer
Masumi Izumi, Doshisha University
Rando Enomoto, Past President NAJC
Tamiko Suzuki, Unitarian Church of Vancouver
Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, Sansei musician, co-founder of Queer Arts Festival+SUM gallery
Matsui De Roo
Reiko (Shimizu) Anderson
Cary Sakiyama, President, Greater Vancouver Japanese Canadian Citizens' Association
Keiko Mary Kitagawa
Cindy Mochizuki
Candie Tanaka
Marina Watabe
J. Sekiguchi
Mitsuko Noguchi
Mona Oikawa, York University
Kendall Yamagishi
Miki Konishi
Julia Aoki
Megumi Anderson
Japanese Canadian / Nikkei Community Allies
Ellen Woodsworth
Emily Steen
Debora O
Siyuan Yin, Simon Fraser University
Zachary Hyde, Professor of Geography and Planning - University of Toronto
Gail Harmer
Debra Sutherland
Laura Stannard
Anuschka Elkei
Stephen Chan, ABC, A Supportive Neighborly Cantonese Yank, A Compassionate Member of the World
Beth Boxall
Beverly Nann, Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society
Jane Kinegal, settler
Audrey Cook
Frantz De Rycke, Singers for a Cause
Cornelia Wyngaarden, Artist
Daniela Elza
Hannelore Pinder
Don Gagan, concerned neighbour
Diane Brown
Rhoda Rosenfeld
T. Rubenfeld
Myriam Hernandez
Christine Lee
Zshu-Zshu Mark, Artist/Instructor
Michelle Blackwell
Rev. Lara Cowtan
Mei Jia Lam, Unitarians Church of Vancouver
Kitaek Hong
Mary Woo Sims
If you wish to add your name, please sign the letter.
Inspired to write your own letter to the City? Get started with our easy letter generator and write in this week ASAP here:
Then join the rally on May 25th (email to volunteer!) and register to speak at the hearing on May 29th.