As the Vancouver Buddhist Temple attempts to bounce back from a tough year across from Oppenheimer Park, the country’s largest Japanese-Canadian festival won’t be returning to the Downtown Eastside park this summer.
Powell Street Festival executive director Emiko Morita confirms that for the second year in a row, Vancouver’s longest-running community arts celebration will be held outside of Oppenheimer Park, which has been home to a tent city encampment since October 2018.
In 2019, festival organizers decided to relocate the event to the surrounding streets so as not to displace people living in the park.
Vancouver’s Japanese community has deep ties to the historic DTES neighbourhood where Japanese-Canadians lived prior to their forced removal by the Canadian government. The festival chose to utilize the space around Oppenheimer Park out of respect for its current residents.
“As a community that has experienced forced displacement, we refuse to continue this pattern of dispossession of vulnerable people in this area,” Powell Street Festival Society president Edward Takayanagi said in a July 2019 statement.
The 44th Annual Powell Street Festival will be held on Aug. 1-2 in the Powell Street area.
Meantime, Canada’s oldest Buddhist temple held its first of two annual fundraisers Sunday, dishing out homemade udon and other traditional food at its popular Japan Food Fair.
Among the items on sales was manjū, a Japanese confection that was stolen in a recent break-in.
On Jan. 18, the temple’s garage door was tripped and left open for around 24 hours, during which time surveillance video captured dozens of looters passing through and treating the normally locked and gated space like a flea market.
Among the $5,000 in items discovered missing were 1,500 homemade and fresh frozen manjū pastries that were to be sold at a fundraiser, and tents from the Powell Street Festival.
Six weeks after the break-in, the manjū desserts sold out this past weekend.
“We made some sushi as well, curried beef, manjū — the one that got stolen, we replaced it as best we can,” said Vancouver Buddhist Temple president Dave Ohori.
Temple staff say they were able to recover 80 per cent of the stolen stuff, including many of the Powell Street Festival tents, during a walk-through of Oppenheimer Park the next day.
“It’s been a little bit challenging,” Ohori said.
“But you know, we have to always look forward and look for brighter days. Things might get better and we hope the people across the street can have a better future as well.”
Since the Portland Hotel Society (PHS) was hired by the province in late January to help find housing for the camp’s residents, Ohori says Oppenheimer Park has been a lot cleaner but it also appears there are more campers and larger structures going up.
“It is still a huge eyesore for the neighbourhood.”
The Strathcona Business Improvement Association (BIA) says it has seen some progress in the park.
“This is not a black-or-white situation,” Strathcona BIA executive director Theo Lamb said.
“We know that this work takes time. Some of the changes we’ve seen — it looks a little cleaner.”
Lamb says her organization’s members are urging the Vancouver Park Board, city council and PHS to keep up the work and keep engaging businesses.
“It’s not a matter of the businesses saying check, yup, it’s all better. That’s not the case,” Lamb told Global News.
“The businesses who operate around Oppenheimer are under no illusions what’s happening in the community didn’t happen overnight — and the solutions and the community-centered approach that I think is going to shift the community is also not going to happen overnight.”
The park still attracts a criminal element, and a disturbing find by Vancouver police on Tuesday, Feb. 25, is a stark reminder that it is still a potentially very dangerous place.
Officers responding to a 911 call for a domestic dispute at Oppenheimer discovered a large cache of weapons in plain view inside a tent.
Nine guns, more than 30 knives, two machetes, two axes and a compound hunting bow were seized. The guns, including an SKS rifle and a suspected replica Uzi, are being analyzed to determine if they are real or fake.
The very real scare is not triggering fear among park neighbours. Ohori is confident and determined that Oppenheimer Park will return to its former use as a safe public space that everyone can enjoy.
“It’s getting better, slowly but surely, it’ll get better,” he said.
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