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While a lot of residents look at the Heritage Day long weekend as a chance to get out of the city, Lethbridge’s ethnic community looks at it as an opportunity to celebrate just being here.
For the past 35 years, the Southern Alberta Ethnic Association has hosted the Lethbridge Heritage Day Festival, bringing together the arts, culture and, yes, the food, from all the nations of the world. The celebration runs from 11 a.m.-4:30 p.m. on Aug. 1 in the South Pavilion of Exhibition Park.
“The Southern Alberta Ethnic Association has just over 25 members, so this is the time when we celebrate all of our heritages and celebrate our diversity,” said Teresa Ternes, program co-ordinator for the Southern Alberta Ethnic Association. She looks forward to the event that attracts approximately 2,000 people.
“If you ask 30 different people what they enjoy the most about it, you will probably get 30 different answers,” she said.
As for her, it’s tough to choose a favourite part of the festival.
“It’s the people. They have so much pride in their culture. You get to feel a lot of pride.”
She is excited about having two new Latin American organizations participating this year from Nicaragua and Guatemala. And because the food must be prepared at Alberta Health-approved facilities, chefs will be hard at work at local restaurants and even the Bill Kergan Centre, the headquarters for this event.
“It’s a fundraiser for us so we can put on other cultural programs and all we charge is a whole toonie,” she said.
To help achieve the goal of increasing cultural awareness, there will be a variety of dance groups, displays and, of course, the food.
Doors open at 11 a.m.; the first dance demonstration begins at 1:30 p.m.
“A lot of people just beeline to the food, and then look at the artifacts on display,” observed Lilly Oishi, president of the Japanese Heritage (Bunka) Society.
At their booth, there will be Bonsai trees on display as well as calligraphy and a special kind of Japanese sand art called “bonseki.”
“A lot of people don’t know the difference between the two, so this is a chance to show them. Bonseki is painting on sand, bonsai is dwarf trees,” she said.
They will also have a demonstration of Japanese chess called “Go.”
Oishi and her organization have been involved with the Heritage Day festival since it began in 1974.
“Heritage Day celebrates our differences. Our differences are what make us individuals. By accepting our differences, it makes us more knowledgeable which helps us get along better with other people if we understand why they do the things they do,” Oishi said.
The event has moved locations over the year. It was once held at the Yates Centre and then moved to the Enmax Centre; however, due to renovations, it will take place this year at the South Pavilion.
“We try to do something different each year to show different aspect of Japanese culture,” she said.
They have done origami demonstrations in the past, but decided to go with calligraphy this year as children are more interested in learning to write their names in that style with traditional calligraphy brushes. The artifacts are different as well. In the past, they have had displays of the different shoes Japanese people use for different purposes.
Oishi remains enthusiastic about the event.
“When I join an organization, I like to put 100 per cent into it, not just pay my dues,”she said.
“I look forward to talking to people about Japanese culture.”
Dance groups will perform traditional dances from Latin America, the Philippines, East Indian, Sudanese as well as traditional Blackfoot dancing. There will also be food from Japan, Afghanistan, Nicaragua and Latin America, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sudan and lot more.
One of the new groups participating in this year’s fair is Amigos Hispanos de Lethbridge, which is a new group formed by Lethbridge’s Latino community to support the burgeoning Latino community in Lethbridge.
“We thought it would be a perfect way for people from South American countries to get together because there aren’t a lot of Hispanics around,” said member Alejandro (Alex) Espindola.
“We just found out we only have 10 minutes to perform, but we had 20 minutes ready,” said Espindola, who was born in Montreal, but whose family comes from Bolivia. They will be performing two dances, including a ceremonial harvest dance from Bolivia called Tin Ku, which re-enacts a fight. He will be playing a traditional pipe called a zampoña to accompany the dancers.
“It is a fight, but they are not enemies, they are friends,” explained member Fernando Espindola.
“When the first drop of blood falls, it means there will be a good harvest,” he continued.
They will also be performing a dance called Tilingo Lingo from the Vera Cruz part of Mexico.
Plus, their booth will feature traditional Mexican food.
“We’ll be serving tacos, but these aren’t the tacos from Taco Bell or the Mexican restaurants in town. These are real tacos and we’ll have food from Bolivia,” said Espindola.
He is looking forward to the event.
“I’m excited to see all the people and showing them something they haven’t ever seen before. They won’t have seen anything like this before unless they’ve travelled outside of Canada. Then they might have seen something similar,” he said.
Lise-Anne Talhami, owner of Ammena Dance Company, is looking forward to having her students perform.
“We’ll probably be having belly dancing and a group of the students will be doing some disco dancing,” she said of their eight-minutes set.
Talhami said they switch things up every year for each of the past five years they have been participating in the festival.
“We’re best known for belly dancing, but that isn’t even the most popular dance we teach. Just most stages are so small, you can’t fit 22 dancers on the stage, so it is easier to have one or two belly dancers.”
Her studio teaches Irish and Scottish dancing, which is very popular, as well as a variety of international dances, so she enjoys the heritage festival as a chance to show off all the different dances.
“Of course, I’m looking forward to it. There are so few venues offering multi-cultural events. It’s just an educational opportunity and increases awareness of treating other cultures with respect. It is a huge problem in Lethbridge,” she observed.
She has noticed Lethbridge’s ethnic community growing.
“Even now Lethbridge is becoming more multi-cultural. I’m Lebanese and when I moved here there were only two Lebanese families. Now there are East Indian families and African families,”
She said the heritage festival is important to support.
“It’s on a holiday, so a lot of our students are away, so we do what we can for a performance,” she said.
“It’s a chance to experience different cultures and different foods; you can even buy products.”
Ternes is impressed with Lethbridge’s cultural diversity and always likes to learn what brought them here.
“In a wartorn country like the Sudan, they show children pictures of the Rocky Mountains. Just picture a five- to seven-year-old looking at the Rocky Mountains. Now wouldn’t that be a place you’d want to go? They just celebrated their new country, South Sudan, after 50 years of military regime,” she observed.
“The Southern Alberta Ethnic Association is pleased and honoured to be part of bringing all of these amazing groups together to showcase themselves.”
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