Event Type : Speaker Series

Session 4: Understanding Campaigns – How Success Happens

What makes a local campaign successful?
Featuring Lauren Hunter, a seasoned strategist with experience on more than 20 municipal, provincial, and federal campaigns, this session breaks down the essential building blocks of effective campaigns—whether you’re running for office or championing a cause you care about.

What to expect:

• A practical overview of the core elements that make campaigns work
• Lessons from real‑world municipal, provincial, and federal campaign experience
• Tips, tools, and strategies for candidates, supporters, and community advocates
• A chance to ask questions about campaign planning, outreach, messaging, and more

Whether you’re thinking about running, helping someone else run, or simply curious about how campaigns shape our communities, this session offers clear, accessible insights you can use.

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📅 Tuesday, April 21, 2026
⏰ 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
📍 Stanhope Fire Fighters Community Hall, Algonquin Highlands
💬 Free, non-partisan, and open to all

The Samurai in Our Closet

Who: Mandy Shintani and Susan Yatabe

Tickets: $15/person

What if the most powerful story you ever learned was the one your family never told you?

Mandy Shintani grew up with a secret hidden in her parents’ closet — her father, George Shintani had a 450-year-old samurai sword that was never discussed. After his death at 97, Mandy began uncovering untold stories of Japanese Canadians through the lens of his life. That journey now shapes her podcast series.

In this presentation, Mandy will share highlights from her podcast, The Samurai in Our Closet, including her travels to retrace George’s life, to pre-war Japantown in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a bus tour through remote internment sites in BC, and interviews with writers, historians and over 70 Japanese Canadians. Through this journey, she reveals a little-known chapter of Canadian history. Before WWII, Japanese Canadians played a vital role in building the economy in BC. But after Pearl Harbor, under the War Measures Act, 22,000 Japanese Canadians were uprooted with as little as 24 to 48 hours’ notice. Mandy’s father’s family was exiled to Sandon, a ghost town in BC’s mountains.

Susan Yatabe will relate her mother’s experience during internment in Kaslo as a teenaged grade 3 teacher. Some of the former students, now in their 90s, have shared their stories with Susan. Mothers and young women provided education and a sense of community in the prison camps.

Ironically, Mandy’s and Susan’s father and uncle — labeled “enemy aliens” — were recruited by the Canadian & British Intelligence Corps. As young men, they were trained initially as spies and later assigned to interrogate Japanese officers accused in one of WWII’s most infamous war crimes: the building of the Bridge on the River Kwai in Siam (Thailand). Mandy’s father received a samurai sword from a surrendered Japanese officer.

After the war, Japanese Canadians faced two cruel choices: move east of the Rockies or be deported to Japan. Despite losing everything, they rebuilt their lives with quiet resilience, focused on protecting the next generation through integration and silence — which led to the loss of their stories and culture.

Today, their children and grandchildren are reclaiming those hidden stories. The Samurai in Our Closet is not just about reclaiming the past — it’s a powerful reminder of what happens when fear and politics override civil rights. It’s a story of resilience, recovery, and why those lessons still matter today.

About the Speakers

Mandy Shintani lives in Vancouver, BC. She is the chairperson of the Japanese Canadian War Memorial Committee.

Susan Yatabe has been the researcher for the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre’s Warrior Spirit website and the podcast. She presented an exhibit at Kaslo’s Langham Museum based on her mother’s wartime experience as a teacher.

Both Mandy and Susan received Japanese Canadian Legacies Society (JCLS) grants: Mandy for her podcast, and Susan for documenting her mother’s story as a teacher.

Life Inside a Cult of Obedience

Who: Sarah Patrick

Tickets: $15/person

“Sarah Patrick’s searching and heartfelt memoir throws open the door on one of Canada’s most notorious cults. Through meticulous research and unflinching self-examination, Patrick reveals how Grenville Christian College, and the Community of Jesus preyed on her youthful insecurities and her need to belong, shaping her into a perfect monster of obedience, complicity, and self-hatred. Binding Shame will horrify and enrage you, yes. But it will also ferry you toward the healing that comes with truth, accountability, and forgiveness. A fearless, important book.” – Sarah Henstra, Governor General’s Literary Award for The Red Word, Professor of English at Metropolitan Toronto University

Update

Congratulations to Sarah Patrick for winning the 2025 Dianne Casoni International Award — Popular Literature Category award for her book.

Bio

Sarah was raised in Toronto, the child of a British war bride and a father who worked as an addiction counsellor. At 16, she attended Grenville Christian College in Brockville, ON, which was recognized for its “tough love” approach to Christian education. Upon graduation, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Drama and English from Queen’s University. Sarah began her professional journey as a publicist in Toronto in the early 1980s, focusing on theatre, dance, and visual arts. She eventually returned to her high school in Brockville to teach English, drama, and history, holding that role for 16 years. In 2001, she relocated to Toronto to work as an executive assistant in commercial real estate, a role she held for eleven years. In 2007, students from her former school initiated a class action lawsuit alleging damages due to the cult-like abuse they experienced there. This prompted Sarah to pen her memoir, Binding Shame: Life Inside a Cult of Obedience, as a way to understand and process her experience as both a student and staff member in a religious cult. In 2014, she relocated from Toronto to Algonquin Highlands, purchasing a historic farmhouse that had once belonged to well-known local trapper James Sawyer. Sarah and her husband, Steve, converted the house into “Sawyer’s Creek Bed and Breakfast,” which they ran for five years before retiring in December 2024.