Description of Historic Place

The University of British Columbia is a public research university with its main campus located in Point Grey, in Vancouver, B.C. The original 1914 campus plan created a grid of malls, with East, West, Main and Wesbrook Malls running north-south and Thunderbird and University Boulevards east-west.

The site is located on a peninsula surrounded by water and the Pacific Spirit Regional Park, a significant green space connecting the city and the campus. The campus is the location of a number of historic places of Japanese Canadian significance that represent important events in their history.

Heritage Value

The University of British Columbia (UBC) has historic, cultural, social and educational value through its multi-faceted representation of Japanese Canadian culture and history in its historic places, entwined with its narrative of discrimination and loss.

The Nitobe Memorial Japanese Garden and the Pacific Bell Tower are significant for their representation of Japanese Canadian culture and learning on campus. Nitobe Garden is important for its association with Dr. Inazo Nitobe, an eminent Japanese scholar, and Dr. Norman MacKenzie, a scholar and former UBC president, who together were instrumental in bringing a program of Japanese Studies to UBC. Designed in memory of Dr. Nitobe by noted landscape architect Kannosuke Mori of Chiba University in Japan, the 1959 garden has aesthetic and cultural value as an outstanding Japanese-style gardens in Western Canada, with a long association to B.C.'s Japanese Canadian community. It was originally maintained by Roy Sumi, the founder of the Vancouver Japanese Gardeners' Association, an organization which continues to care for the garden today. The garden holds one of the best examples of an authentic Japanese tea house in North America.

Along with the garden, the traditional Japanese Pacific Bell Tower is another significant cultural symbol at UBC. Cast by master craftsman Masahiko Katori and gifted to the university in 1983, the bell is rung on New Year's Eve in a traditional service hosted by the Vancouver Buddhist Temple, a tradition that goes back many generations in Japan.

UBC is significant because it underscores the importance of higher education to the Japanese Canadian community, found in part in the story of a Japanese Canadian woman who received her degree in 1916 as a member of the very first graduating class of 38 students. The 72 male and 14 female Japanese Canadians who graduated from UBC up to 1942, despite ongoing discriminatory practices, are another example of the value of higher education to the community. Collectively, sites such as the Asian Centre (with its Japanese-style landscape designed by Roy Sumi), Institute of Asian Research, and the Japanese Canadian collections of the Asian Library and UBC Special Collections, containing thousands of documents and photos relating to the Japanese Canadian community from 1901 to the present day, helping to represent this dedication to higher learning.

The expulsion of 76 Japanese Canadian students in 1942 marks UBC as a symbol of the discrimination imposed on these students during World War II, and the wider provincial and federal discriminatory policies against Japanese Canadian students and citizens province-wide. Compounding this event was the lack of defence of their students by the university's president, chancellor and military committee who, by their inaction, contributed to the enforced loss of hope and hard-won education that these students had as Canadian citizens prior to the war. These unjust actions cut short any future possibility of higher education for the 76 students.

It is significant that after much pressure from the Japanese Canadian Community, UBC agreed to honour these student with a separate honorary degree congregation in 2012, but this gesture was tarnished by the fact that only 23 elderly students were alive at that time, and only ten able to attend the ceremony.

With its wealth of Japanese Canadian cultural and educational components, UBC remains highly significant to the Japanese Canadian community.

Character-Defining Elements

Not applicable.