Kitagawa comes through for Vauxhall
On October 12, 82-year-old Yukio Kitagawa finished a goal to cycle 100,000 km to raise funds and awareness for the Vauxhall Academy of Baseball.
Kitagawa was born in Mission, British Columbia on Oct. 12, 1936, but sadly, his mother died a few days after delivering him into the world.
Come Dec. 7, 1941, Kitagawa and his family were forcibly removed from their home along with all Japanese citizens living on either side of the border within 100 miles of the West Coast.
“The invoking of the War Measures Act in Canada made this happen,” Kitagawa said. “Our family unit went from Market Gardening as a way of life to being part of a labor force on a sugar beet farm in Diamond City, which is a community just north of Lethbridge.”
Despite being only six years old at the time, Kitagawa was expected to participate in the family labor, hauling water, raising sugar beets from seedlings to harvest.
After 12-year-old Kitagawa and his family were freed from the camp, they moved to Lethbridge and eventually opened a moulding/woodworking shop
“In the process, I was fortunate to be able to combine my work experience in the woodwork shop with technical education attending SAIT (Southern Alberta Institute of Technology) two months a year for four years,” Kitagawa said. “I graduated with a Journeyman Carpenter Certificate and at age 28, I went to night school to get my high school matriculation. With the combination of a matriculation and Journeyman Carpentry Certificate, I qualified to get a Provincial Government Bursary and to attend the University of Alberta in the faculty of Vocational Education.”
With a Bachelor of Education, Kitagawa was able to teach carpentry and other courses at the high school level and subsequently taught at Bishop Grandin High School for 20 years, retiring at age 53 in 1989.
In terms of family, Kitagawa and his future wife, Barbara, grew up together and amidst objections from people who did not like the idea of an interracial marriage, they married on Feb. 27, 1960.
The Kitagawa’s had three boys together and celebrated their 58th anniversary in 2018.
Over the years, Yukio and Barbara and have been very involved in an array of roles, including volunteering at the Colonel Belcher Hospital from 1987 to about 1997, assiting with classes in model building, devoting many hours to accompanying the veterans on outings, and holding a fundraiser called the “Blue Blazer Program” where money was raised to purchase a generic closet of about 25 blue blazer, grey slacks, white shirts with the Legion donating berets and ties.
“We felt that program was needed as when we took the veterans on outings like Remembrance Day, concerts, Theatre Calgary, etc. they did not have dress clothes to wear,” Kitagawa said.
The Kitagawas have also been volunteering with Theatre Calgary since 1993 as “front of house” ushers and as organizers of the Seniors Saturday Matinees.
Near the end of season in 1996, the Theatre was $1.5 million in debt, so the Kitagawas offered to assist them in their summer fund-raising campaign and come September, Theatre Calgary was opened. For about three years in the early part of 2000, the Kitagawas also served as the “Secret Santa” for the Father Lacombe Nursing Home, purchasing, wrapping and delivering gifts to all residents at the Home; they have also volunteered at Heritage Park and at the Delta Lodge in Kananaskis.
Kitagawa has had several major accomplishments in his life and those include winning the Junior National Weightlifting Contest in 1961, and holding records in my weight class for many years; being named “Athlete of the Year” in Lethbridge in 1963 and several times being awarded “Athlete of the Week” by CTV; obtaining his Senior Matriculation; going to SAIT and later the U of A to get an Education Degree, coaching minor league hockey for some eight years, coaching weightlifting at the high school, and his services as a volunteer over the past 31 years.
“We recognized early on, the importance for our life is being purposeful, essentially being of use to others,” Kitagawa said of him and Barbara. “Through all the varied, harsh, distressful experiences in the formative years of my life, it seemed those hardships had a profound effect and influence in the core of the person I was to be and the subsequent experiences that were to follow. I now feel very honored to have been favored with those character traits; positive attitude, dedication, perseverance, fortitude, selfdiscipline and moral constitution, that made the marathon ride successful, fulfilling and enjoyable.”