As a part of the Japanese Canadian Legacies Society’s intergenerational wellness program, Tonari Gumi will be organizing a Sugar Beet Wellness Tour during the last week of August in 2025.
Between 1942 and 1949, some 22,000 Japanese Canadians were unjustly removed from the B.C. West Coast. From within this group, more than 4,000 Japanese Canadians spent some time during this period working in the sugar beet fields of Southern Alberta. For many, it was an indescribably traumatic experience.
Over six nights and seven days, tour participants will be able to visit where the sugar beet fields were located, meet with local JC’s and knowledgeable researchers and historians and actually see a sugar beet field and where sugar beet workers lived. The bus tour will also include healing circles and discussions in Lethbridge and Taber. Through this experience, we hope that the participants and their family members might better understand what happened during this period, have a chance to share their feelings and heal together.
The 2025 Japanese Canadian Sugar Beet Wellness Tour will start and end in Calgary and is scheduled to take place between Saturday, August 23rd and Friday, August 29th in 2025. The 2025 Tour is being led by David Iwaasa who was born in Southern Alberta and led a previous sugar beet tour in 2019 (see the documentary about that trip at https://youtu.be/xbRjYGqEMxQ). Patti Ayukawa will participate as our Healing Circle Facilitator, the same role she had for the 2024 Nikkei National Museum internment camp tour and the 2024 Vancouver Island Obon Tour.
All travel will be via a 50-passenger washroom equipped highway coach bus from Calgary with stops in Lethbridge, Raymond, Magrath, Cardston, Waterton Lakes National Park, Picture Butte, Iron Springs, Coaldale and back to Calgary. Travel to and from Calgary from other parts of Canada can also be arranged separately.
- Accommodations will be in premium hotels with breakfast included. Most meals, entrance and transfer costs are also included. The cost will be $1,400 + GST for double occupancy ($500 supplement for single occupancy).
- In addition, to encourage inter-generational participation, a limited number of partial scholarships for descendants of sugar beet survivors (aged 14 – 25) are available on a first come, first serve basis. Applications for this scholarship must be made by June 1, 2025.
- There is a reduced rate option for those who wish to drive their own vehicles and arrange their own accommodations but wish to participate in all of the meetings and tour luncheon and dinner events.
Full details, registration and payment information are available on-line at www.tonarigumi.ca/sugarbeetwellness. Final registration deadline is June 20, 2025, at 5:00 pm (PST). Any questions about the tour should be directed via email to taka.iida2025@tonarigumi.ca.
