|
||||||
|
Buddhist church rejoices |
||||||
|
by NICHOLAS KEUNG August 20, 2005 Parishioners succeed in preserving their heritage while integrating into Canadian society. Teruji Goto beams as he strolls through the newly minted Toronto Buddhist Church at Sheppard Ave. W. and Allen Rd. The North York church, with its 18,000-square-foot interior and parking for 80 cars, is a huge departure from the congregation's humble beginnings. It started as a gathering in a house on Huron St. in 1946, the year after Canada broke up its Japanese-Canadian internment camps. The story of this Buddhist community is fraught with contradictions: On the one hand, Japanese Canadians needed, more desperately than many, to integrate into Canadian society; yet they also needed to find a way to preserve their heritage in a nation that, in the bitterness of wartime, viewed their homeland as the "enemy." That this traditional Buddhist temple is called a church and its monks ministers is a reflection of how hard the community worked to fit into mainstream Canada. Yet having been forcibly dispersed into the hinterlands of Canada, the Japanese Buddhists stuck with a conviction that their beliefs and traditions must be kept alive. "The church survived in Canada," says Goto, 78, who was born and raised near the Fraser River in British Columbia. "It was started by a group of faithful people and it's growing. It's just amazing." Today's opening of the new Toronto Buddhist Church, next to Downsview subway station, will mark another milestone for Judo Shinshu Buddhism in Canada, the Buddhist tradition that was the first to arrive in Canada 100 years ago. Monshu Koshin Otani, Lord Abbot of Judo Shinshu Buddhism, will be on hand from Japan to bless the new church, celebrate the centennial and lead the O-Chigo Procession, a traditional ceremony where children dressed to represent celestial beings parade about the temple grounds, accompanied by musicians from Japan and Toronto playing traditional gagaku court instruments. After decades of quiet existence at Bathurst and Bloor Sts. - its presence known mainly to Japanese Canadians - the congregation moved out last month. It's now set to reach out to people outside the ethnic community. "Japanese Canadians are one of the most integrated ethnic communities, with an interracial marriage rate of well over 70 per cent," says senior minister Grant Ikuta. "If we don't branch out to the greater community, our future is written on the wall.... (Any) ethnic heritage can only reach up to three or four generations, and we'd be limiting ourselves if we don't reach out. "Japanese Canadians don't come to the church just to be with others in the community or for its cultural attraction any more," adds Ikuta, 41. "It's time to focus more on our Buddhist teachings and apply those teachings in our day-to-day lives." The church's top mission now is to throw open its doors to outsiders, through Japanese cultural classes on everything from tai chi to flower arrangement and taiko drumming. From there, it hopes to introduce more Canadians to Buddhist teachings, Ikuta says. The metallic exterior of the $6 million church, contrasted with cedar beams, gives it a modern appeal. Inside, an Internet-wired library contains collections of ancient Buddhist scriptures. There's also a commercial kitchen with 13 gigantic cookers for gatherings and receptions, a centre for dharma classes, a worship hall that holds up to 300 parishioners, and three classrooms - amenities that couldn't be accommodated at the old site. All of this was once beyond imagining for Goto, who, along with his family and 25,000 other Japanese Canadians, was interned in B.C.'s Slocan Valley and Lemon Creek camps from 1942 to 1945. Their homes and property had been seized amid national concern that Japanese residents might aid the enemy. It didn't matter that many were born and raised in Canada; they were treated with the same suspicion and scorn innocent Muslims faced after 9/11. Until then, Japanese Canadians had settled mainly on the West Coast, founding Canada's first Buddhist church at the Ishikawa Hotel, on Vancouver's Powell St., in 1905. Internment and dispersal forced much of that community across the Rockies to parts east. After being resettled to the London, Ont., area by a government placement officer, Goto made his way to Toronto in 1946, flouting an official quota that limited Japanese Canadians in the city. With help from Jewish residents, who had experienced their own share of persecution and discrimination, a Japanese group found a footing in Toronto and began meeting on Huron St., before buying a building at 918 Bathurst St. in 1955. There are now 17 related churches in Canada and 2,000 members in Greater Toronto. "It was a different time," recalls Goto, who taught Sunday school for 25 years while working in the garment industry. "There was this movement among us that said, `Let's integrate.' Parents named their kids with anglicized names and there was no Japanese spoken, but we insisted (on taking) a hard stand to be Buddhists." In the early days, the Sunday service was also vital as a social gathering. "In public schools, everyone was Caucasian. You didn't see many Asian faces. Parents wanted their kids to be with other Japanese children," explains Diane Mark, who attended the church's Sunday school in the mid-1960s. "It was fun and there was a lot of social connection with other Buddhist teens." But Buddhism remained a taboo subject in mainstream settings. "Nobody else was Buddhist in my school and you just didn't want to centre yourself out. It's out of the fear of being different," says Mark, whose husband Allan is Chinese. Their teenaged boy and girl both go to the church. "That's why you don't have `Japanesetown,' like Chinatown, because people couldn't congregate and they didn't want to stand out." Tom Allan, an Irish immigrant, remembers how he and his Japanese Canadian wife Hisaye were slighted in the early 1960s when he asked his Presbyterian church to host their wedding. He was warned: "We don't want you to make a mistake by marrying this girl." Allan was ticked off. So much so that he left his church and joined the Buddhist congregation, which accepted him with open arms. Allan, now 69, is its current president. But people of non-Japanese descent make up only about 15 per cent of the congregation, most of whose members are second- and third-generation Japanese Canadians who communicate mostly in English. The church has had its ups and downs. The scars of World War II linger, because a pre-baby-boom generation of Japanese Canadians was essentially wiped out when many refused to go to internment camps and were shipped back to Japan. That age group is poorly represented in the membership. "Many of these (problems) can be accounted to the war, which separated many families and led to a decrease in (the Japanese) population and birth rate at certain times," Ikuta says. "All these difficulties have solidified us as a community, but over time it's made us to be rather insular. Now there is acceptance of us in the society, and the time is right to begin inviting others to the church." |
||||||