Written by Takeshi Fukushima
Fay Yoshie Ishii (nee Koyama) was ten years old when she arrived in Farnham, Quebec, with her parents and two younger sisters. In the late 1940s, she and her family travelled by train to Farnham from the Bay Farm internment camp in the Slocan Valley, where they had been sent to stay during the war. Her two younger sisters were born in Bay Farm, and the three girls were raised by Fay’s mother and grandmother; her father and grandfather had initially been put to work in road camps and joined them in Bay Farm later during the war.
When the news came that the internment camps were closing, her father and grandfather disagreed: should the family return to Japan, despite its three youngest members having been born in Canada? Or should they take their chances further east of the Rockies? There was no option to return to Vancouver, where their family had run a successful drycleaning business until 1942, when the War Measures Act forced their separation and uprooting. Eventually the family decided to stay in Canada, hoping to resettle in Toronto. However, the city had set a quota on the number of Japanese people that it would accept, which had already been met. The young family then found itself in Farnham, Quebec, just southeast of Montreal, staying at the government-administered Farnham Hostel in repurposed military barracks. The Koyama family arrived in June 1946, and were likely some of the first residents at this site.
Fay remembers having to cross an old road to get to the mess hall, where her family had their meals. The food wasn’t great at first, she said, but eventually it got better — in particular, after one of the residents, a Mr. Omoto, complained about it enough to be placed in charge of the mess hall. Farnham would be the place where she first tried french fries, and where she would meet a French-Canadian boy whom she would date for a summer. Her mother and sisters stayed at the Hostel while her father looked for work and a place to live in the Montreal area, which was experiencing a post-war housing shortage, and where there was lingering anti-Asian sentiment. She remembers being told by her family and the other Hostel residents, “shouganai, ganbari, all that stuff.”
Eventually her father found a job in Montreal as a tailor for Friedman and Co., and her mother started working at a garment factory. Fay’s father wanted her to start school in Montreal, rather than in Farnham, so the family moved to the city at the end of the summer, having stayed at the hostel for about two months. While living in Montreal, Fay attended St. Raphael’s House on Avenue de Musée, where she was part of a preaching club. She bowled regularly all across the city — she remembers bowling with the Sugie family at midnight before going to eat in Chinatown. Fay was also involved in many cultural events in Montreal: she was the announcer for the Bon-Odori concerts held in La Fontaine Park by the Hayashis, as well as a showcase of Japanese dances at Expo 67. She was also part of the floats organized by Father Labrecque for the Saint Jean Baptiste parade for several years, including one memorable float depicting the first priest that travelled to Japan. Fay eventually worked as a Japanese-English translator and had a long career as a teacher. She now lives in Pointe-Claire.
| ? | ? | Shiromatsu Koyama | Kiyoko Ogawa Koyama | ||||||||||||||||
| Kanagashira Yamasaki Koyama 1907 – ? |
Fusako Koyama 1912 – ? |
||||||||||||||||||
| – | Fay Yoshie Koyama Ishii | Noreen Akemie Koyama | Naomi Joy Koyama | – | |||||||||||||||