11 May 2026
Posted by Kelly Fleck 
Loading ...
A photograph from RETRACED. Artist Kate Kamo McHugh performs in Coalsdale, B.C. RETRACED runs at Shintani Gallery from May 9 to 24
TORONTO — Dance and theatre artist Kate Kamo McHugh had always been curious about the places where her grandparents were born and spent significant parts of their lives, but never talked about.
Since their arrival in Canada, her ancestors, the Takedas and Kamos, moved and were moved multiple times across Canada. Last summer, the Waterloo-based artist retraced her Nikkei ancestors’ paths through B.C., Alberta, and Northern Ontario with support from the Japanese Canadian Legacies Society.
In places significant to her family’s history of building, forced removal, relocation, and rebuilding, Kamo McHugh created movement and dance, documented by her partner and photographer, Colin Boyd Shafer. The result is RETRACED, an interdisciplinary exhibition rooted in personal and collective memory.
Through portraiture, movement, recordings, and live performance, the exhibit explores how displacement leaves lasting traces. RETRACED opens at Shintani Gallery in Toronto, part of CONTACT Photography Festival, from May 9 to 24.
“It’s empowering and a true honour to be able to return to places that I know my family would have wanted to remain in but couldn’t. Even though my sadness was profound thinking about the family having to leave their home, I’m still glad we travelled to these places in the hopes that their stories and sacrifices aren’t forgotten,” Kamo McHugh tells Nikkei Voice.
Always on site while Kamo McHugh and Boyd Shafer worked were their Gosei children, five and one at the time, playing in or exploring the sites with Kamo McHugh’s Sansei mother. The oldest and youngest living generations of the family became a part of the journey, bringing a truly intergenerational layer to the work.
Kamo McHugh in a sugar beet farm. During the war, her grandmother’s family was forcibly removed from her home and sent to labour on a sugar beet farm in Alberta. Photo credit: Colin Boyd Shafer.
Piecing together the family map
Inspiration for RETRACED was sparked when Kamo McHugh travelled to B.C. for the Japanese Canadian artist symposium in 2022. She spent three days exploring Vancouver and was unprepared for the emotions that surfaced during her first visit to the city, thinking of her grandmother’s life there 80 years earlier.
“I was very close to my grandma. And it just seems so unbelievable that there was this huge chunk of her life that I didn’t know and that we never talked about,” says Kamo McHugh.
Kamo McHugh retraced her ancestors’ journeys through a mixture of family stories and memories along with photographs, physical paperwork, and digital archives. While Kamo McHugh uncovered so many stories and places, she continues to find more questions that need answers. The discoveries are bittersweet, knowing she can’t ask her late grandparents about their past lives.
Instead, Kamo McHugh talked to her uncle, Sam, nearly 102, but with a sharp memory, along with her mother and aunt, and their cousins. Sam shared memories of his parents (her great-grandparents) and their lives in Canyon, a small community in B.C. With her family, she began to piece together the map of their ancestors’ journeys.
Artist Kate Kamo McHugh at Harris Ranch, part of the RETRACED exhibition for CONTACT Photography Festival at Shintani Gallery in Toronto from May 9 to 24. Photo credit: Colin Boyd Shafer.
A serendipitous connection
The three weeks exploring places from her family’s history were a whirlwind, but a moment that stands out was visiting Harris Ranch, and the serendipitous circumstances that brought her there.
Her great-grandfather’s farm in Canyon was near the border of B.C. and Alberta, just outside the 100-mile “restricted zone” (the area along the B.C. coast where Japanese Canadians were forced to leave their homes). For a while, the family thought they wouldn’t have to leave. Then they received a letter from the government telling them to quickly sell their possessions and get ready to leave.
“My Uncle Sam told me they were put in limbo for a very long time. They didn’t have money, and they were running out of food. He said it was a very desperate situation,” says Kamo McHugh.
Despite a letter from their non-Japanese neighbours urging the government to let them stay, the family was forcibly uprooted from their home and sent to the internment camp in New Denver in 1943. By then, the camp was full. Instead, the family was sent to Harris Ranch, a private ranch where the government rented farmland, and a handful of shacks were hastily constructed for Japanese Canadian families.
Kamo McHugh suddenly had to change her plan of photographing at the Nikkei Internment Memorial Site in New Denver. Still owned by the same family, she asked if the museum could connect her to the ranch, but it couldn’t disclose private information. That was when another door opened. She discovered she was mutual friends with the daughter of the Harris family, who is also a dancer.
While now living in Montreal, the daughter just happened to be in town visiting her family at the same time Kamo McHugh was in B.C. She invited Kamo McHugh to the ranch and showed her the property and where the shacks once stood.
“It was quite emotional. I felt very connected to my grandfather. It was also very sad…it’s so beautiful, the mountains, the trees, there’s a lake, and the sky. It’s just such a beautiful part of Canada,” says Kamo McHugh.
Yet within this beautiful natural landscape, she thought of her grandfather, just a teenager, forced to leave his home and living with his parents and twin brother in a small shack, separated from his older brothers who were sent to road camps.
Kamo McHugh drove along Coghlan Road near Langley, B.C., searching for her grandmother’s birth home. From the road, she could see a mountain in Washington in the distance and thought of her grandmother seeing this mountain on clear days as she travelled down this very same road. She imagined her seeing the mountain for the last time as her family left for the train station, heading to a sugar beet farm.
In spaces connected to her grandfather, she wore his green vest, and a wrap skirt made by her grandmother in spaces connected to her. Spending time reflecting in each space led to a deeper understanding of her grandparents, her mother, and herself, and how this history left traces through generations of her family.
“My grandparents didn’t want to make mistakes…I think this is very common in our community, but they wanted their kids to be very perfect,” she says.
With additional support from a Balancing ACT grant, Kamo McHugh’s mom, Denise, joined the trip to help with caregiving for her two children while she and her partner worked. Because of this support, her children were able to experience important places in their family history while spending time with their beloved grandmother.
“Getting to see her be a grandmother to my children and having her come along to discover all of these things about her own parents that we didn’t know as a family before, I think, was meaningful for her,” says Kamo McHugh.
Artist Kate Kamo McHugh on Coghlan Road. Along this road is where her grandmother’s birth home once was. Photo credit: Colin Boyd Shafer.
20 Grains of Rice
RETRACED builds off Kamo McHugh’s earlier work, called 20 Grains of Rice. In this, she explores how language is lost through generations of a family. When her great-grandfather first arrived in Canada, he spoke Japanese fluently. But each generation, expedited in the aftermath of the internment era, lost more of the language, until Kamo McHugh, a Yonsei, could say only 20 words.
Her great-grandfather could speak thousands of words. Thousands of grains of rice could feed his whole family. Whereas 20 grains of rice? You could count them in your palm. They wouldn’t even be a mouthful.
For 20 Grains of Rice, Kamo McHugh created a gesture for each Japanese word she knew. Shoyu, meaning soy sauce. Hashi for chopsticks. Takai for expensive, and itai, meaning pain.
Kamo McHugh brought these gestures to RETRACED, and they became the movements she explored in the different locations. On Coghlan Road, where her grandmother’s family once lived, she embodied the gesture for itai.
Artist Kate Kamo McHugh at Parliament in Ottawa, part of the RETRACED exhibition. Photo credit: Colin Boyd Shafer.
Passing on pride
Working on this project led to a deeper understanding of not only her family, but herself and her Japanese Canadian identity. While at times it was hard to face this history, it also strengthened her determination to preserve her family’s stories and culture for her children. She wants her children to have pride in their Japanese Canadian identity and know their family’s stories.
Kamo McHugh named her son after his great-great-grandfather, and he has now been to the places where his namesake once lived. Only a toddler at the time, he won’t remember the trip, but he and his sister will grow up with stories and photos tied to places in his family’s history.
“I want them to be proud of where they came from. And I think this trip was a good way for them to experience their culture and their family history firsthand,” says Kamo McHugh.
“I feel more connected to my Japanese Canadian roots and more confident in being able to share that with my children.”
Kamo McHugh also hopes the work will inspire others to explore their roots and ask questions to family members who are still here. She also hopes the project sparks questions about what happened to Japanese Canadians during the Second World War.
“I wish so much I had been interested in this when my grandparents were alive. That makes me very sad that I can’t ask them those questions,” she says.
“I hope it inspires people to ask the people they have in their lives to find out a little bit about their own family history. And to be curious about what happened in the 1940s and not let it happen again here.”
***
RETRACED, Shintani Gallery, May 9 to 24
700 Lansdowne Ave.
