Everyday Encounters

In our nation of immigr ants, the traces of other cultures and countries are all around us, from the restaurant stalls that line our suburban strip malls to the party tunes floating from open windows on a warm summer night. Here, we look at just some of the w ays we Canadians tend to experience multiculturalism in our daily lives.

CUISINE

Just about every plate of food tells a story—especially in a country like Canada, where culinary tastes and traditions come from around the world, settle here, and then evolve based on locally available ingredients and changing trends.

As global food supply lines grow ever more sophisticated and waves of newcomers continue to fill out the demand for imported products, Canada’s cities have emerged as some of the most exciting dining scenes in the world.

From the Vietnamese-inspired “pizza” on Bánh xèo crepes at the Richmond Night Market, to the Berlin-style döner kebabs or Japanese soufflé pancakes at Toronto’s Kensington Market, to the myriad restaurants, take-out spots, and food stands serving up bold culinary twists on traditional Indian, Mexican, or Chinese dishes, Canadians are spoiled for choice when it comes to experiencing the foods of our immigrant cultures.

Food for thought

While people in Canada are blessed with a rich and varied landscape of cuisines to choose from, class and racial barriers continue to prevent many talented chefs of immigrant backgrounds from rising to the national stage. Meanwhile, the word “inspired”—like Middle Eastern-inspired, Thai-inspired, or Japanese-inspired—is often thrown around loosely, giving license to mostly white chefs working for large restaurant groups to co-opt elements of these cuisines while their POC cooks are relegated to junior positions in the kitchen.

BOOKS & FILM

Unlike the Nordic noir of Sweden and Denmark, there’s no dominant storytelling genre in Canada. Instead, our books and films are as diverse as they come, with tales that blend styles, weave in multiple languages, and spotlight communities from coast to coast.

Over the last half-century, prolific writers like Lawrence Hill, Dionne Brand, Lee Maracle, and Wayson Choy have penned poems and novels that have helped to expand Canada’s multicultural story, reflecting our rich diversity and its inherent conflicts.

And in recent years, more communities have come to colourful life through books, including Little Jamaica in Toronto (in the book Frying Plantain by Zalika Reid-benta), the frozen tundra of small-town Nunavut (in Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq), and Vancouver’s Chinese community (in Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien).

Toronto’s Chinese community, meanwhile, has recently been given a mainstream spotlight through filmmaker Domee Shi’s short film for Disney, Bao, and the feature-length Turning Red. Shi joins a long line of filmmakers who have turned the lens on their unique diasporic identities in Canada, including Mina Shum, Nicolás Pereda, Atom Egoyan, and Deepa Mehta.

Point to ponder

Despite a stated desire to create pathways for diverse voices in the creative arts, Canada’s media and entertainment industries still struggle with barriers to access. According to statistics from the Canada Council for the Arts, racialized artists represent only 15 percent of all artists in the country, and racialized artists have a much lower median income than non-racialized artists. Ironically, the media continues to celebrate and popularize aspects of various

cultures while sidelining many of the people who bring these rich traditions to the forefront.

MUSIC

Pre- colonization, the land echoed with the chanting and drumming of many First Nations people who believed that drumming was the heartbeat of Mother Earth. As European settlers arrived, they brought their musical traditions with them. The maritime fiddle music heard to this day in kitchen parties and weddings across the East Coast is a surviving tradition brought over by early Acadian, Irish, and Scottish settlers. Meanwhile, Vancouver boasts a 150-year- old tradition of Cantonese opera, the largest scene of its kind outside of Hong Kong. And the jazz musicians who flocked to Canada in the early twentieth century to escape Prohibition and anti-black racism in the US helped to create a legacy of jazz that is still celebrated through the country’s major jazz festivals, including the historic Halifax Jazz Festival, the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal, and the TD Toronto Jazz Festival.

Deep roots, future sounds

The Polaris Music Prize is given to artists for putting out the best new record, as judged by an impartial jury of music insiders and writers. After addressing criticisms over the perceived lack of diversity in the award nominees and jurors—its first eight winners were white indie-rock and pop artists—the prize has finally settled into its original purpose: to fairly identify, for mainstream audiences, the most promising artists and map the future sound coming out of Canada. In 2014, Tanya Tagaq, an Inuk throat singer from Nunavut, took home the prize. From there, winners have been more varied and boundary-pushing, from Jeremy Dutcher’s artful and moving tribute to his ancestral Wolastoqey language to Lido Pimienta’s Latin-pop output, which draws from her Afro- Colombian and Amerindian roots.

VISUAL ARTS

Art is everywhere—splashed onto the red brick of our neighbourhood alleyways, strung up on gallery walls, adorning our bodies, and bringing life to all of the interstitial places in between. A neighbourhood’s public art often pays tribute to the area’s past, nodding to the traditions and cultural influences of its people. Take, for example, the statues of Sun Yat-sen greeting visitors to Chinatowns across our major cities. Or the large-scale murals honouring the late Portuguese fadista and icon Amália Rodrigues located in Little Portugals in both Toronto and Montreal and at the Portuguese Cultural Centre of Mississauga. In Canada’s public art realm, though, diasporic patriotism often doubles as a form of protest. The Chinatown AntiDisplacement Garden in Toronto was created partly as a statement against gentrification and urban development. And in Manitoba, the sculpture known as Kakigay-pimitchy-yoong Pimatizwin in Sagkeeng First Nation was created both to honour the lives of missing and murdered Indigenous women, and to protest centuries of neglect and abuse.