Photo by Salihan

Vancouver is home to more than twice the average rate of mixed-race couples, with 8.5 per cent compared to the national average of 4 per cent according to Statistics Canada. Couples who have found their footing in Vancouver and are raising a family view the city as open and accepting, a comfortable place to bring up their children.

From a couple who didn’t think they would ever get married, to a couple who moved around searching for ‘a sense of coming home’, mixed-race couples tell us how their relationships have impacted their family lives, each other and their views on society.

Serendipity in the (e)mail

Growing up in Osaka, Japan, Kayoko Tatsumi had a dream of visiting many different countries and seeing the world.

She came to Vancouver in 1998 as a student and liked it so much she knew she wanted to stay.

“I never ever thought I was going to get married,” says Tatsumi, 46. A busy schedule and a strained relationship with her mother didn’t give her the confidence to get married and start a family of her own.

For Jason Chou who grew up in Taipei, Taiwan, and has worked for an international trading company in Vancouver for nearly 10 years, marriage was not in the cards.

“I was traveling a lot and studying and working – the timing wasn’t right,” says Chou, 47, who came to Vancouver in 1991, The entrepreneur and business student was living in Victoria when he first met Tatsumi at a mutual friend’s party.

“I noticed he was this big, tall guy playing with the kids – he really seemed to love kids”, says Tatsumi.

The chance meeting turned out to be something more only when Chou replied to Tatsumi’s group email about student loans.

“This was before texting so it was quite formal and impersonal”, says Tatsumi.

Soon the messages were no longer just about student life.

Following a few months of back and forth emailing Tatsumi decided to visit Chou in Victoria. She recalls that she couldn’t remember what he looked like since it was months after the party.

Yet, the meetup turned out to be fortuitous. Chou proposed to Tatsumi on their second date, when she once again visited him in Victoria.

The couple settled in Vancouver and now have a girl Irena, 10 and a boy Yuma, 7.

Both Irena and Yuma went to a Japanese preschool and speak English and Japanese. Their parents take them to cultural events which celebrate their backgrounds such as the Powell Street Festival and the TaiwaneseFest.

Tatsumi and Chou communicate primarily in English and Chou has picked up a bit of Japanese over the years. Tatsumi says the most important element is acceptance. She credits the city and how they educate students on diversity – race, religion, family.

Tatsumi says sometimes Yuma will come home and tell her a classmate doesn’t speak good English but they can still communicate, they can just play.

“My daughter says she’s half-Japanese, half-Taiwanese and Canadian,” says Tatsumi.

Finding a place to call home

Tatsumi and Chou at the Powell Street Festival in 2007. | Photo courtesy of Kayoko Tatsumi

Lisa Hanson remembers what her husband Ricardo Mendes was wearing the day she met him at a Vancouver cafeteria in 2009.

“He had on this dress shirt with little tennis racquets sewn on it – his mom made him that shirt – jeans and these black boots, he always wears black boots,” says Hanson, 36, who came to Vancouver from Calgary in 2007.

Mendes says he had a hunch but Hanson didn’t – a mutual friend had wanted to set them up and arranged for the luncheon.

Mendes, 33, who grew up in Santo André (greater São Paulo area), Brazil and worked in tourism and hospitality, came to Vancouver in 2004 to improve his English. He ended up spending the majority of his time with fellow Brazilians and after a year in Canada, realized he hadn’t made much improvement in his English. Mendes decided to get a tutor and meet more native English speakers.

“His English was pretty good,” says Hanson, although Mendes jokes, “she may have just said that because she liked me.”

They married one and a half years after their initial meeting.

With little knowledge of Portuguese, Hanson traveled to São Caetano (also in the São Paulo area) to meet Mendes’ family and announce the engagement. The Mendes family spoke no English.

“Even so I had this sense of coming home, being a part of a family. They welcomed me without any hesitation at all,” she says.

A move from Vancouver to the B.C.’s interior proved to be more challenging.

“When I got pregnant, Ricardo got a job opportunity and we got transferred to Kamloops,” says Hanson.

The couple describes B.C.’s interior as a place of harsh weather, loneliness and feelings of segregation and discrimination.

“It wasn’t so much about our baby son, Diego, but Ricardo has darker skin and an accent. I had a ‘Spanish sounding’ last name. It was difficult at times for us,” says Hanson.

Their stay in Kelowna was short-lived and the couple is now re-settling in Vancouver. Their main priority is their young son, who at a year and a half, speaks a bit of Portuguese. He responds in Portuguese with “agua” when Hanson says, “water.”

The Mendes family wants to be able to make both Brazil and Canada their home.

“I want him [Diego] to respect people and his family. I want him to know his grandparents [in Brazil] are still a part of his life even though they’re not here in Vancouver,” says Mendes.