#My Baachan 16. A New Life Strawberry Farming #Nikkei #history

In the pre-marriage photo my Baachan received, her prospective husband stood in a suit next to a brick building, which my Baachan assumed was the home she would be living in. Instead, after their wedding, he took her in a horse and buggy out to Port Hammond in Maple Ridge, to a wooden shack in the middle of nowhere. It burned down a year later with all their possessions. They moved to a few other strawberry farming Japanese communities, including Strawberry Hill in Surrey, which exists as a place though no one farms strawberries there any more. This drawing is how I imagine their first home looking.