Copies of “The Limited Edition” are now available for $10 each.  You can now reserve your copy by calling 604-257-8100 or email to hondakeiko@gmail.com, and pick up at the Kerrisdale Community Centre reception desk during 2016. First-Come, First-Served!   Acknowledgements    “Three years on a stone (will make a stone warm)” is the Japanese proverb meaning that perseverance will win out in the end. THE KERRISDALE PLAYBOOK RE-COLLECTION is the celebration of cultural transformation with our last full four years of continuous convivial “conversation” with the community. In this limited edition, we have selected 16 articles out of over 150, which represent a unique expression of the life force coursing throughout our community. Acknowledgments almost always begin by saying there are countless people to thank. This is particularly true this time. I want to thank all of the people, the interviewees, and readers over the past four years who have contributed to the Kerrisdale Playbook for great conversations. They have all inspired me. In particular though, I want to thank my team comprised of the 30 devoted young and the young-at-heart over the last four years. They all have brought their wholehearted work and created a new culture – the equivalent of what Barbara Ehrenreich would call – “Dancing in the Streets.” The new culture is symbolically a collection of community stories that evoke joy and exuberance in taking time to appreciate what’s around us, finding connections with people and nature, and expressing creativity in everyday life. Each and every article has offered a genuine, life-affirming and community-engaging conversation that allows us to find joy in the other fellow. Bravo to the team and what a pleasure to work with all of you! Of course I want to thank the Kerrisdale Community Centre Society...

By Josh Coward Photos courtesy of Josh Coward   Seventy years ago, on the baseball diamond located on Oppenheimer Park, in what used to be the heart of “Japan town” in Vancouver, the great Vancouver Asahi Baseball Team played it’s last game. In their daily lives, those Canadians of Japanese descent were not allowed access to certain jobs no matter how well educated they were. They were socially segregated at public places all the time. Only on the ball park were these “Japs” able to prove themselves as equals. The story of the Vancouver Asahi Baseball Team is not just about baseball, it was also how they played the game. In order to counteract the adverse conditions, the manager, Harry Miyasaki introduced a strategic style of offence and defense, putting great emphasis on discipline and training. This new type of baseball came to be known as ‘smartball’ or ‘brainball.’ The Asahi baseball team was a symbol of the Japanese Canadian struggle for equality and respect, and despite being disbanded and interned, left a legacy of inspiration for future generations of all Canadians.  Now, 70 years after the disbandment of a great team, a new spark begins to flicker. On October 11, 2014 a group of Japanese Canadian and Japanese people got together to revive this legendary team and formed the Canadian Nikkei Youth Baseball Club (CNYBC).   The CNYB is dedicated to creating healthy communities through the game of baseball. Inspired by the legacy of the Asahi Baseball team, for their skill, perseverance and accomplishments, it is our dream to bring back the Asahi Baseball Team to the Nikkei Community and Canada. We are a new club and are open to all, without regard to gender, ethnic origin or residency.   At the CNYBC we are...

By Kenta Motoike Photography by Alan Peng November 2nd will mark a significant milestone in Irene Ronnie’s life as she will become a centenarian and will be receiving a letter from the Queen herself. This distinction is a turning point for Irene that recognises her as a both a subject and a person. However, in order to appreciate such a milestone, the significance of this milestone can only be conveyed through context. At one point Irene even jokingly mentioned the Queen’s letter is just “for your own ego and no other reason”. Thus, the Playbook has decided to provide this context and insight through a personal interview of Irene and her experiences. What was it like growing up? Same as school kids as everywhere I suppose. Everyone was Scottish there; the atmosphere was filled with “Scottishness”. Is that a word? I was born in Aberdeen and went to school in there. Nothing unusual about the school, I had the usual courses and exams. I was not a great sportswoman, more of the bookish type. What was it like in school? The courses were the regular courses, we learned according to our age and we had the usual examinations. All together I enjoyed school as I’m quite studious by nature. Speaking through my own personal experience, I simply liked school; I liked the discipline that gave me a sense of direction. It directed you in your thinking and you could argue there was never anything to stop you from discussing what you wanted to talk about. You had the chance to argue with the teacher if you didn’t agree what they said. How did you get involved with the Air Force? At a certain age you had to decide what you were going to join,...

By Amy Cheng Photos Courtesy of Joanne Nakonechny   Art is not just about those usual paintings that hang on our walls. Rather, art is a way of understanding and unraveling how people piece their worlds together, with the medium being infinite. For Joanne Nakonechny, an avid connoisseur of textiles, this is especially true.   Joanne’s appreciation with textiles dates back to her childhood and that hasn’t dimmed. “While growing up, my mother regularly knitted and sewed, and in turn, she taught me how to cross-stitch, knit, and sew,” she fondly recalls. Additionally, she also has an aunt who is a weaver. Despite being well over ninety years of age, her aunt is still enthralled by the different perspectives in using Ukraine colours and patterns into her material work. ”It’s so incredibly inspiring,” Joanne gushes. Being surrounded by all those materials and inspirations involved in her mother’s and her aunt’s creative processes since young, her nascent fascination with textiles only grew. The more she wove, the more ideas came to her. And before she knew it, she was enamoured by a euphoric sense of freedom.   “I’m not only working with my hands, but I’m also working with various colours and my mind—thinking of the endless possibilities to the patterns. And within those frameworks, there is this constant rewarding engagement with chaos, which I just love,” she adds. “I understand that this can be overwhelming, but as long as you maintain within the weave structures, you have a hundred degrees of freedom. And this freedom is exactly what enables you to explore and find yourself within those very structures and boundaries,” Joanne explains. After all of her years of working with textiles, Joanne is still discovering herself in the process. For her, working with...

            By Patrick McGuire Photo credit: Noriko Nasu-Tidball, Keiko Honda, & Albin Sek              If spray paint is the brush of the times then the stencil artist is king.               Banksy and Shepard Fairy are among the most popular and influential artists in the world and the street art movement they’ve lead has created the images that have captured the spirit of our times. Both honed their craft on the streets, using stencils and spray paint to reflect and shape their urban environment. Robert Naish is not a street artist because that is not where he shows his art, but his stencils are from the street but his art encompasses the whole urban environment.                Naish finds his stencils everywhere. In thrift stores, junk shops, roadside stands and garages sales, they are the fly swatters, the kitchen tools, the plastic railroad tracks and children’s toys, the ones we throw away, the ones with interesting shapes that he can pin to the canvas and spray. He uses them for their shapes, for the lines they create when he places them with precision. He sprays on top of them with bright colors on giant canvasses to create intricate works that are stunning to behold. He has thousands of stencils to choose from.               “It’s endless,” says Naish, “I have more stencils than I could use in a dozen lifetimes. The things people throw away are like gold to me.”   Naish first began to paint with stencils and spray guns after painting extensively with oil and brush and exhausting all his ideas with them. He needed to do something different and found his answer in the city around him.               “Stencils allow me...

  By Kenta Motoike   Purpose and Overview  The goal of the intergenerational creativity project, led by Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society, is to strengthen the connection between youth and seniors through the sharing of their experiences and stories in a collaborative manner. These stories and experiences are conveyed and expressed through multidisciplinary formats in order to facilitate interactions between youth and seniors. The project chose “placemaking” as multidisciplinary format to inspire people to collectively reimagine and reinvent everyday spaces as the heart of every community, including public and semi-public spaces such as boulevards and front yards.  The Placemaking Team comprised of all ages is directed towards addressing the intergenerational and intragenerational distance faced by youth and seniors due to their differences in age, culture and experiences. While youth and seniors at times have trouble relating to each other due to their perceived differences, this distance is further exacerbated by the fact that we live in an increasingly privatised world. Public sites; places for people to converge and congregate such as parks and public parks are dwindling. This matter is compounded by the systemic tendency to prioritise personal and corporate privacy at the expense of the community. Some may say we live in a state of communal limbo, where people are in proximity to each other physically, yet we remain emotionally distant and disconnected. Large scale systematic change on society is daunting yet achievable, but it must begin locally with a social ripple. The article intends to elaborate on the progress in the Placemaking Team through the process involved in the completion of one boulevard located near 23rd and McKenzie St, namely Oliver’s boulevard. Concept and Execution On Sunday March 31st, work on Oliver’s boulevard commenced, however prior to actually working on the garden itself,...

By Amy Cheng   This spring I had the pleasure of being invited as a participant of the Weaving History Together: Making a Collaborative Blanket project led by Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society, which is an interactive and collaborative scheme designed to bring our neighbourhood together as a community through weaving a community blanket. Not community in the way it is used to describe a target market where conversations are only grazing the surface level. I’m talking about a real community of diverse people, of all ages and backgrounds, invested in each other. With that in mind, I spoke with the project facilitator, Debra Sparrow, an eminent weaver on her vision and inspiration for the project, and some of the other participants, like myself, on the process and the significance they have found through this initiative.   “I wanted to facilitate art that both the young and the old could easily participate in, because I believe art can be created by everyone—we are all creative,” says Debra. Of her own work with textiles, Debra describes, “The art of weaving is familiar to every culture, making it an ideal tool in creating communication. Conversations and understanding can’t help but manifest across a loom.”   Also inspired by the her affectionate memory of the Kerrisdale Community Centre as a child, Debra says, “I think it would be really fun to weave stories from the threads of our experience and communicate our stories with others. Binding our stories together in creating a beautiful community blanket.” She hopes to demonstrate the way our stories reflect the knowledge and wisdom that are part of every generation. “We need to listen, then listen some more,” Debra explains. “We just have to pay attention.”   “This project will do just that. As others...

  By Amy Cheng Photos: Noriko Nasu-Tidball     With different paces of life and activities, it is far too common for different generations to live in their own so-called “separate lives,” even if they were living together. Grandparents who are usually alone during the day may feel detached from their grandchildren who are more likely to spend their time online than to interact face-to-face with their family members.    This has greatly limited our opportunities in nurturing cross-age connections and understanding. We would hope to think that the issue of a generational gap is not as prevalent. And yet, many of our activities are divided by age group, more so than ever before. How many of us have actually taken steps to consciously narrow the gap?   Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society (VACS) is taking the lead to address the growing gap by launching“Intergenerational Creativity” Project, federally funded and supported by many community organizations including our very own Kerrisdale Community Centre (KCC). This project has been created to promote mutual understanding and respect across generations through art-driven activities, and to flesh out the varying gifts and resources that both the young and the old can give one another.   On May 1st, 2015, the project officially launched its kick-off event at KCC as a pilot site where we were joined by people of all ages and background. I have been recruited to this project as youth member and I have to say, it was extremely heartwarming to see everyone seated together and genuinely shared their passion and vision about ways to transcend the limitations society has place upon us. And eager participants, such as myself, could only relished and warmed up to the many inspirations and ideas that filled the room to the brim. ...

By Chloë Lai Photos: Noriko Nasu-Tidball     With delicate intensity, a young Japanese woman dips a bamboo ladle into a small black cauldron and raises it up again, the steam from the near-boiling water she has collected curling softly as it vanishes. She pauses. A moment later, the ladle is being tipped into a tea bowl at a slight angle, the hot liquid streaming down its inner curve until it finds the bottom. She lays the ladle, called a hishaku, across the top of the black pot, and reaches for the chazen, a short-handled whisk also made of bamboo. Its slender legs are splayed slightly outward from the handle, their tips curled in toward the tightly bundled limbs gathered at the centre. She lowers the chazen into the bowl and raises it, keeping it perfectly horizontal. She pauses. Repeats the action. Pauses. The third time, the chazen is suddenly vertical, whipping the water first in tiny circles, then in one larger, more sweeping motion that encompasses the entire interior space of the vessel, the movements so controlled that the wide sleeve of her kimono barely rustles. She places the whisk on the table, picks up the tea bowl and without hesitation pours it out and begins to wipe the bowl dry with a white linen cloth.   I exhale sharply, realizing that what I had assumed was the matcha blending was instead the most contemplative bowl washing that I could ever have imagined.   It is the Kerrisdale Community Centre’s first Sakura Festival, and the Japanese tea ceremony demonstration by the Urasenke Tankokai Vancouver Association has just taught me my first lesson in chanoyu, the way of tea: each step of the ceremony is a ceremony in itself.   From the placement of the...

Building Intergenerational Connections Through Creativity and Culture...