JAPANESE-CANADIAN CRUSADER Mary Keiko Kitagawa Appointed to Order of BC

I had the great privilege of being one of the people who wrote a letter in support of Mary Kitagawa’s nomination to the OBC, so I’m proud to have played a small role in getting recognition for all that this humble, self-effacing, inspiring woman, has done for others. I am a scholar and public historian, and I say this in order to emphasize the grounds for which I make the following statement:

Mary Kitagawa is one of the most important individuals in terms of public impact in the last twenty-five years of history in BC.

As a historian, I present the argument to my students that the great currents of history are borne by mass movements, social changes that reflect the actions of many people working together or driven by larger shifts in economics and demographics. Historians seldom argue now for viewing historical change as the result of the impact of individual “great men.”