Japanese Canadians’ luggage in Building B (Horse Show Building) in conjunction with forced removal and internment, City of Vancouver Archives
white men in white stroll
through the green and pay
no heed to the japanese
canadian boys peering
through the gaps
in the high wire fence
clink
the ball rolls
to a stop
a foot beyond
………the enclosure
Tristan Hay Lee is a Toronto-born writer of Korean, Japanese and Scottish ancestry. Her work has appeared in Room and The Selkie, and has been shortlisted for the HarperCollins/UBC Prize for Best New Fiction and the Bridge Prize. As a fourth-generation Japanese Canadian descendant whose family was interned and dispossessed, she is drawn to themes of identity and alienation, and often uses her writing to explore intergenerational wounds.