Earlier this month, Vancouver City Council unanimously supported the creation of a Japanese Canadian Hastings Park Interpretive Centre at the PNE in Hastings Park.
The permanent centre would honour the 22,000 Japanese Canadians interned in British Columbia during the Second World War. This includes about 8,000 who were held in poor conditions in the fairground buildings at Hastings Park, before being relocated to internment camps across the province.
At the time in the early 1940s, 90% of Japanese Canadians lived in BC, and 32% resided in Vancouver. They were unable to return to Vancouver until 1949, four years after the war, after most of their assets had been liquidated. Their internment also led to the end of Vancouver’s Japantown district, historically situated on Powell Street in the Downtown Eastside.
According to a member motion by Vancouver City Councillor Pete Fry, the project is being spearheaded by the Japanese Canadian Hastings Park Interpretive Centre Society (JCHPICS), which has already developed an architectural plan and cost estimate for renovating an Interpretive Centre in the PNE’s Livestock Building.
The project is estimated to cost approximately $3 million, with partial funding already provided by the Japanese Canadian Legacy Society. JCHPICS is seeking additional funding from the City of Vancouver, as well as the provincial and federal governments. In early 2025, City staff will return to City Council with some recommendations on how the municipal government can potentially provide funding support.
The PNE first publicly indicated its support for such a centre by JCHPICS in 2021, when planning first began, and another agreement was reached earlier in 2024.
The centre would include an interpretative monument, ramp, and display booth. According to JCHPICS, the PNE has agreed to locate the centre within the abandoned cafeteria space of the Livestock Building. This centre would be in addition to Momiji Gardens — an existing Hastings Park area that honours the detainment of Japanese Canadians.
Most of the fairground’s historic buildings — including those used for internment — were demolished in the late 1990s and replaced with park space, as the municipal government anticipated that the provincial government, which owned the PNE at the time, would relocate the PNE to a different site.
Additionally, since 2021, the PNE has been working with the Challenger Relief Map Foundation to bring back the 80 ft by 76 ft (6,080 sq ft) topographical map of British Columbia to the fairgrounds. The intention is to renovate a space within the Livestock Building to create a new permanent home for the painted three-dimensional map made out of plywood.
The Challenger Map, considered a provincial treasure, was built by George Challenger and his family from 1947 to 1954. Between 1954 and 1997, the map had a permanent home in the BC Pavilion building at the PNE. It was viewed by millions of visitors, until the building’s demolition, at which point the map was placed in off-site storage.