Oral Interview with Joyce Ozier for the JMABC Artists Scribe. Interviewed by Carol Herbert. She speaks about her upbringing in the Jewish community of Boston, MA and provides a brief summary of her immediate family. She talks about her education, including her early artistic influences, and anecdotes relating to producing art and experiences as a child and teen. Joyce talks about how her arts career truly started in the experimental theatre/performance art scene in 1970 Vancouver. She talks about how this led her into arts administration in dance companies, and later teaching English as a second language into her fifties. Joyce explains how ESL teaching didn’t bring her the same happiness as the arts, and how her son convinced her to try store window dressing, which she eventually turned into a business for 10 years. She tells of how she transitioned to a full time visual artist, and how her art style is based in abstraction, movement and thematic use of colour. She also describes a prominent collection of work about the Holocaust that she is most proud of. She talks about how she continues to paint, and is also a part of a collective that she created for artists aged 65 and above called the B-Older Gallery.
Interview with Shaira SD Holman for On The Record: The BC Jewish Queer & Trans Oral History Project in collaboration with JQT Vancouver. Interviewed by Carmel Tanaka via remote Zoom video call. SD identifies themself overall as queer, but also as a butch dyke and genderqueer. SD talks about being raised as a secular and cultural Jew. SD talks about growing up in LA to a single parent and eventually moving to Rock Creek, BC becoming a cowboy on the countryside. SD shares about being ‘out’ as queer in high school and eventually going to Emily Carr for arts upon moving to Vancouver. SD talks about not feeling at home in Vancouver’s Jewish community as compared with the working class Jews in LA or their Jewish leatherdyke community in San Francisco. SD talks about their late wife Catherine, and how they were each others’ sanctuary where Catherine was encouraging to their arts endeavors. SD talks about the Pride in Arts Society, and creating the Queer Arts Festival. SD also talks about opening the SUM Gallery as a place for queer artists to be themselves and kickstarting queer recognition in Vancouver's arts scene. SD closes by giving the advice that life is not a sprint, but a marathon; to keep learning, and remember the history that comes before you.
Interview with Susan Dempsey for On The Record: The BC Jewish Queer & Trans Oral History Project in collaboration with JQT Vancouver. Interviewed by Carmel Tanaka via remote Zoom video call. Susan (she/her) is a Jewish woman, born in St. Catharines, ON and living in Victoria. She identifies with the lesbian community, but confides the idea of a sexuality without boundaries is something she’s getting more used to. Susan shares about her parents’ and their respective upbringings and livelihoods as mostly assimilated Jews in Chicago and Toronto or Southern Ontario. She talks about chosen family like her klezmer bandmates in the Klezbians, coming out to her family, and when she realized herself that she was a lesbian. She reflects on her childhood and growing up aware of political events like the JFK assassination. She talks about eventually finding the field of psychology, studying in St. Catharines, working in peer counseling initiatives and non-profits. Susan talks about relationships and reconnecting to the Jewish community through feminist and/or lesbian Seders after negative experiences and ambivalence. She talks about the Klezbians and feeling valued to queer and Jewish communities, wondering about the place for young people in current Jewish community, and wishing she was more proud to be Jewish and out throughout her life.
Interview with Michelle Dodek on Jewish education. Michelle discusses her experiences organizing and working at TAG--Torah, Avodah, and Gemilut Chasidim--in Vancouver.
Interview with Sandra Hockstein on Jewish education in BC. Sandra discusses her involvement with the Burquest Hebrew School from 1991 to 2004. Her children attended the school. Sandra was on the board and worked as a parent volunteer.
