Big Ideas
The teaching materials on this website are organized around three thematic areas, or Big Ideas: Racism, Resistance, and Real People. Lessons found under Racism can relate to any period, not just the internment era of the 1940s. Resistance is about Japanese Canadians’ resistance to racism, from the earliest years of migration and settlement to the recent work that resulted in the BC Redress. And Real People focuses on the amazing accomplishments of contemporary Japanese Canadians.
JapaneseCanadianHistory.com
This digital learning portal was developed with funding provided by the Japanese Canadian Legacies Society (JCLS). In 2022, the JCLS contracted 18 BC teachers and a project coordinator to deliver new lesson packages, a digital course for teachers, and a new website to house the materials. The site was designed, developed, and built over a three-year period and completed in 2025. See Acknowledgements to learn more about the team of dedicated educators who produced this site.
Lesson Plans
JapaneseCanadianHistory.com contains a curated collection of lesson packages designed for a variety of grade levels, course types, and student abilities. The lessons come from a variety of sources; some existed previously, while a large number of new lessons have been developed by BC teachers specifically for this site. More than ten new lesson plans are available in French for French Immersion classes.
Reference Library
The reference library is a curated list of resource and reference material is intended to support further study, research, and learning by both teachers and students. This curated list will continue to be updated, and new resources and reference materials will be added over time.
Resource Archive
The resource archive contains curated images, source documents, media files, and other relevant materials that can be used in support of, or as an extension to, the lesson packages. The archive can be used for student inquiry-based activities, and selected sources can be downloaded for use in support of teacher-developed lessons.
Teacher Course
Our course for teachers offers those new to teaching Japanese Canadian history an opportunity to learn more. Each learning module in the course contains focused information, images, and video clips in addition to a brief quiz. The modules are self-paced, and teachers (or students) can work through them in any order.