JCLS-funded project, 2024-2025

In 2005, Montreal Japanese Canadian community organizers donated documents, recordings, photographs, and publications to the McGill University Archives (MUA). With materials dating to the 1940s, this Collection was initially assembled by the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre of Montreal’s History and Archives Committee in the decades preceding the transfer of its stewardship to McGill. There is now a renewed interest in local Nikkei history by Japanese Canadians (including descendants of postwar families and recent immigrants). Our project aims to enhance the sustainability and accessibility of our community’s archive and grow its contents to increase its availability for present and future generations. 

Given that wartime trauma and postwar dispersal fractured the Japanese Canadian community and thereby limited transmission of cultural and historical knowledge, our project will help reconnect us to our roots and help our community grow and thrive.