Once A Proud Canadian

About the Book

This is not your ordinary historical novel. In a world filled with insecurity, terror, and doomsday scenarios there is a hunger for a new vision of hope. This book presents such a vision in the palatable form of an informative and rewarding story. Woven into the storyline is a valuable Student Handbook on Life that gives the novel a unique and profound philosophical significance. This is a novel that not only spans oceans, continents and generations, but also challenges the intellect and touches the emotions of everyone who has been directly or indirectly affected by the consequences of war…and the yearning for peace. It is an international story of mistakes made - and lessons unlearned.

The novel takes the reader on an exotic journey through historical time to the fabled "Land of the Dolls" where Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier landed like a tsunami wave in 1549 and set in motion a tide of events that rippled across the Pacific Ocean and centuries later lapped upon the shores of British Columbia. From the martyrdom of Paul Miki, samurai warrior and Jesuit priest, on Nishizaka Hill in 1597, the discovery of the Kakure Kirishitan by Father Bernard Petitjean in 1865, the arrival in Steveston, BC in 1913 of the Miki brothers, Kasuzimo and Hideo, the evacuation of all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast during the Second World War, to the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, we learn how the events of the past mitigate upon the present.

About the Author

James T. Sawada was born in Pincher Creek, Alberta in 1941. He is a Nisei, or second generation Canadian of Japanese ancestry. He holds a Masters degree in Interdisciplinary Studies. He is a retired school teacher, school principal, philosopher, and writer. He is married with two children. He resides with his wife Norma, in Steveston and Eagle Bay, British Columbia, Canada.