Description of Historic Place

The former Marpole Japanese Language School, now the Marpole Boy Scout Hall, is a one-storey plus basement wood-frame gabled building currently standing at 703 West 70th Avenue in Vancouver, B.C. As the Marpole Japanese Language School, it was standing at 8757 Selkirk Avenue, now the southern half of the site for a three-storey apartment building.

Heritage Value

The Marpole Japanese Language School has historic and cultural value as the one-time centre for the approximately 1,000-strong Japanese Canadian community in Marpole before their forced relocation to internment and work camps away from the coast in 1942.

It is also significant for its role as an important social centre for the Japanese Canadian community after Japanese Canadians were permitted to return to the coast in 1949, and for its present use by the 40th Boy Scouts, an organization that remembers the building's original owners and uses.

The Marpole Japanese Language School building and both its past and present locations have value for relating the history and circumstances of its relocation, an important physical reminder of the forced dispossession of Japanese Canadian properties, and the erasure of their pre-World War II prominence in many coastal communities.

The original building site is important because it marks the transformation of Marpole after the World War II into a neighbourhood of apartment buildings, many of them built on properties that were once Japanese Canadian-owned properties with single- family homes.

The Hall has cultural and social value for being representative of many Japanese Canadian language schools in the province that were both a fixture in the daily lives of a majority of Japanese Canadian children and the de facto community halls for the local Japanese Canadian community. It is also valued for the personal memories of the community life of Japanese Canadians in Marpole before 1942, and for some returning members of the community after 1949. Its ongoing use by the Boy Scouts and other youth service groups continues to give the place community and social value, as does the dedication plaque installed in 1991 that acknowledges the Japanese Canadian community in Marpole and the event of their evacuation.

Source: Province of British Columbia, Heritage Branch

Character-Defining Elements

Not applicable