
Kelly Fleck
Kelly Fleck is the editor of the Nikkei Voice, a Japanese-Canadian national newspaper. A recent graduate of Carleton University's journalism and communication program, she volunteered with the paper for years before taking on the job. Working at Nikkei Voice, Fleck has her finger on the pulse of Japanese Canadian culture and community.
Updated July 2018
Stories from This Author

Never Been Better: Author Leanne Toshiko Simpson Uses Romantic Comedy to Explore Mental Illness
May 14, 2024 • Kelly Fleck
TORONTO — Author Leanne Toshiko Simpson’s offbeat and big-hearted romantic comedy, Never Been Better, follows Dee on her sometimes misguided journey for love. With her rambunctious sister in tow, Dee is ready to confess her love for her friend Matt during a lush, tropical destination wedding. But there’s one hiccup—Matt is marrying her other friend, Misa. The three friends have an unconventional origin story, meeting in a psychiatric ward to treat bipolar disorder. A year later, Matt and Misa are …

Author Leslie Shimotakahara's Novels Offer Literary Passageways to Places in the Past
April 30, 2024 • Kelly Fleck
TORONTO — Award-winning author Leslie Shimotakahara transports readers to another time and place through her novels. Her vibrant characters and vivid landscapes begin with inspiration grounded in stories she’s heard—particularly from her maternal and paternal grandmothers—that spark her imagination and then take form through careful research. “It is stories and experiences and having known these women when I was very small. These images or scenes tease at my imagination over time and that gets supplemented by historical research. Then gradually, …

Cousins Janis Bridger and Lara Jean Okihiro Share Their Grandmother’s Story in New Children’s Book
Dec. 7, 2023 • Kelly Fleck
For authors and cousins Janis Bridger and Lara Okihiro, family stories and history were shared in bits and pieces at their grandparents’ dining room table. This is how their new children’s book Obaasan’s Boots begins, with Charlotte and Lou full of questions and hungry to learn more about their family history after dinner at their grandparents’ home. A chapter book for 9 to 12-year-olds, Obaasan’s Boots is told through the perspectives of cousins Charlotte and Lou and their grandmother, Hisa, …

Darcy Tamayose on Exploring Hauntings by Ghosts, Grief, and Guilt
Aug. 31, 2023 • Kelly Fleck
LETHBRIDGE — In award-winning author Darcy Tamayose’s new collection of short stories, Ezra’s Ghosts, the people in the prairie town of Ezra are haunted. In four fantastical and interconnected stories, Tamayose explores the multiple meanings of haunted—not just by ghosts, but by grief, guilt, and loss. While Tamayose explores and experiments with storytelling pace, density, and flow, each story is linked with the characters’ comings and goings in the fictional town of Ezra. Ezra takes influences from the prairie landscapes …

The Spaces In Between: Artist Elysha Rei's Intricate Hand-Cut Paper Art
July 16, 2023 • Kelly Fleck
While the sakura were in full bloom outside the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, inside, a different kind of sakura blossomed, Japanese Australian artist Elysha Rei’s new installation called Strength in Sixty Sakura. Part of the JCCC’s new anniversary exhibit, 60 Years of Friendship Through Culture, the piece is constructed entirly of intricately cut paper, using kiri-e, a Japanese paper-cutting practice. Two sakura branches reach out from opposite ends of the wall, adorned with 60 sakura, commemorating each year of education, …

Finding Forgiveness: Director Stafford Arima on Bringing the Award-Winning Memoir to the Stage
March 21, 2023 • Kelly Fleck
CALGARY — When author Mark Sakamoto’s memoir, Forgiveness: A Gift From My Grandparents, won CBC’s Canada Reads competition in 2018, its themes of resilience and forgiveness through adversity, racism, and war connected to Canadian readers, even though the book was published four years earlier and covered historical events from decades ago. In Forgiveness, Sakamoto explores the lives of his grandparents and their traumatic experiences during the Second World War. His maternal grandfather, Ralph MacLean, was a Canadian soldier who spent …

Celebrating a Century: Nisei War Veteran and Esteemed Journalist Frank Moritsugu Turns 100
Feb. 9, 2023 • Kelly Fleck
TORONTO — There are not many centenarian journalists, and even fewer who continue to actively and regularly write, but Frank Moritsugu is the exception. Moritsugu, a Nisei war veteran, esteemed journalist, and beloved Nikkei Voice columnist, celebrated his 100th birthday on Dec. 4. “Becoming 100 years old is very strange. I’m very happy I did it, but it’s not something I ever dreamed of,” Moritsugu tells Nikkei Voice during an interview in his Etobicoke condo. Moritsugu’s journalism career has spanned …

Monarch Butterflies Connect Seniors To Nature And Memories
Dec. 11, 2022 • Kelly Fleck
TORONTO — On a hot summer afternoon, in the cool shade of the gardens at McCowan Retirement Residences, a group of seniors gathered, buzzing with excitement as they prepared to release newly-hatched monarch butterflies. One at a time, they held the butterflies carefully by the wings, and when they let go, they flew up into the sky and out of sight. When it was her turn, Pat Adachi delicately let go of the monarch, where it decided to rest on …

Contemporary Dancer Takako Segawa listens for the Echoes of Ancestors in New Dance Film
Nov. 2, 2022 • Kelly Fleck
OTTAWA — Performed to haunting music and set in the melting, snowy landscape of Petawawa’s Heritage Village, contemporary dancer Takako Segawa‘s new dance film honours the legacy of the Japanese Canadians sent to the prisoner of war camps 80 years earlier. As a first-generation Japanese immigrant, Segawa pays tribute to the Japanese Canadians who arrived before her, the hardships they faced, and offers healing in her own way. Called Sho ga nai – It can’t be helped, Segawa was inspired …

Rediscovering an Incredible Story of Community and Resilience in New Westminster
Sept. 27, 2022 • Kelly Fleck
In creating a children’s book about their grandmother’s life, cousins Lara Okihiro and Janis Bridger have uncovered their family’s prewar life in New Westminster, B.C. But while digging through archives, directories, photographs, documents, and family files, and with the help of their parents, aunts and uncles, second cousins, and their great uncle, Isi Nakazawa, the cousins also uncovered an incredible story of resilience and community from Japanese Canadians in New Westminster and their family’s part in that story. Rediscovering a …
New Site Design
See exciting new changes to Discover Nikkei. Find out what’s new and what’s coming soon! Learn MoreDiscover Nikkei Updates



See exciting new changes to Discover Nikkei. Find out what’s new and what’s coming soon!