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It is hard to imagine a story more on-target for The Canadian than this edition’s cover feature on the making of Shōgun in Vancouver. It’s a Canada-Japan tale that spotlights world-leading Canadian skills and teamwork, gorgeous elements of traditional Japanese culture and Japanese and Canadians working together. And, as too often happens, Canada’s contribution has been largely overlooked – but not by us!
Full disclosure. Various old Vancouver friends of mine appear in this story, guys who had a hand in this production, and the city’s rise to become one of the world’s top film production centres.
Way back in 1980, while studying Japanese at UBC I lived in a big old house in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood. It was divided into ‘bed-sits’ mainly inhabited by sculptors and painters. And our common basement kitchen was a drop-in place where other artists and carpenters would sit around smoking and drinking coffee. Some brought their kids who would play in the yard outside, notably Mark Ennis, then age 9 and Alex Godfrey, age 5.
Once word went round that the city’s fledgling film industry needed specialists to build sets, one-by-one almost all those guys ended up in the IATSE union local.
Fast-forward 44 years and Mark Ennis is a 25-year veteran master set carpenter, having followed his dad, Stu, into the union. Alex Godfrey, after starting out in the union, went on to convert an old industrial building into a sound stage which he sold to a major industry player. As a consultant, he is currently helping Winnipeg attract Hollywood productions.
There is more. Since I’m left-handed, the difficulty of writing kanji made me an utter failure in my Nihongo course. But as I was driving cab on weekends for Black Top Taxi I had more pocket money than most undergrads. And studying Japanese was my frequent excuse to go for sushi with my housemate Abraham Anghik, now a renowned Inuit sculptor. We used to go to Jinya on Broadway, where the chef behind the counter was a fairly recent immigrant from Osaka, Hidekazu Tojo. It was a few more years until he opened his own restaurant, which is now world-famous. But he is still my friend.
