Curator, historian, community activist.
Born at Steveston, British Columbia on 15 October 1933, the second of five children of Japanese immigrants Torasaburo Nishikihama and Sawae Yamamoto, her family moved to Vancouver where her father worked at the Codfish Cooperative Sales Society. They lived in a thriving Japanese neighbourhood called Paueru Gai. In 1941, the family was forcibly moved to an interment camp at Minto, BC where they lived until early 1945. They relocated successively to Middlechurch and Whitemouth before arriving in Winnipeg in 1950. She was the first female President of the Manitoba Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre (1955).
On 16 May 1959, she married Alistair Macdonald Thomson (1933-2021) and they had two sons before separating. In the late 1960s, she attended university as a mature student, receiving degrees from the University of Manitoba (BFA 1977) and the University of Leeds (MSoc 1991). She also studied Asian art history at the University of British Columbia.
She began working as a curator at the University of Manitoba's School of Art then moved to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan to teach art history at the University of Saskatchewan. She worked with Inuit artists at the Sanavik Inuit Cooperative in Nunavut before returning to British Columbia in 1995 as curator of the Burnaby Art Gallery. In 2000, she became the inaugural curator and executive director at the Japanese Canadian National Museum at the Nikkei Centre in Burnaby.
She served as President of the National Association of Japanese Canadians (2005-2010), a position also held by her brother-in-law, Arthur Kazumi “Art” Miki. In 2021, she published a personal memoir entitled Chiru Sakura: Falling Cherry Blossoms.
She returned to Winnipeg in September 2023 and died there on 11 July 2024.
“Social notes,” Winnipeg Tribune, 11 May 1959, page 12.
Obituary [Alistair Macdonald Thomson], Winnipeg Free Press, 1 May 2021.
Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 27 July 2024.
“Legendary Japanese Canadian curator Grace Eiko Thomson dead at 90,” Vancouver Sun, 17 July 2024.
“Activist Grace Eiko Thomson was a powerful voice for marginalized Japanese-Canadians,” The Globe and Mail, 3 August 2024.
Grace Eiko Thomson, Wikipedia.
We thank Catherine Collins for providing additional information used here.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 8 October 2024
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