Awesome Dinners at the “Shandhar Hut“

Abbotsford is home to a high number of different ethnicities and the Sikh community of Indian origin plays a major role in this respect. So what could be more obvious than eating dinner at an Indian restaurant?

Since we became friends with a UFV student, whose parents own an Indian restaurant only a 30 minute drive away from campus, we decided to eat dinner at the “Shandhar Hut” in Chilliwack.

The family owned restaurant was opened in 2004 and has since then gained an extraordinary reputation in the Fraser Valley, as I found out in my online research of it and of course by the taste of the different delicious dishes served there. The name of the restaurant is interesting because it consists of the Punjab word ‘shandhar’, which means ‘gorgeous’ according to their website or ‘awesome’, according to my friend, who works there as a waiter. The second component of the restaurant’s name is the English word ‘hut’ to let it sound inviting to its guests and to hint at the cosy atmosphere of the restaurant. The combination of these two words used as the name for an Indian restaurant in my opinion is a very good choice because it is easy to pronounce for non-Punjab speakers and once you have eaten there and learned the meaning of the word ‘shandhar’ you realize why it is called so and at the same time remember the name and the positive connotation added to it.

The menu offered at the “Shandhar Hut” is very diverse and only Indian (except for a few drinks that are not Indian) and they also offer traditional Punjab and other Indian drinks, such as different Lassi beverages, chai tea, mango juice or Indian beer. All dishes are freshly prepared and handmade by the cook and the delicious and famous Naan bread is baked by my friend’s mother in the traditional tandoor oven. There is a quote by the famous Canadian cookbook author and cooking show master James Barber on their website about traditional Indian bread: “After eating their (Indian) breads, you may never be satisfied with rice again.” This quote shows a certain pride of their traditional style of cooking continued in the diaspora because even people like James Barber, who is not Indian, appreciate the outstanding taste of it. 

The entrées served at the “Shandhar Hut” range from Daals and Tandoori, goat and lamb dishes, seafood, to many vegetarian dishes, as it is very common in the Indian cuisine. Of course they also serve all kinds of chicken dishes, such as the well-known Butter Chicken, Chicken Korma, or Chicken Madras, which is described in the menu as being a dish “only for the daring” because it is very hot. The huge choice of different dishes shows that they do not adapt their cuisine to the non-Indian taste but instead kept the original recipes from India and usually serve them according to different preferences of mild, medium, or hot. This is not always the case with ethnic cuisines in diasporas because I recall a discussion in my Canadian Literature class about the biotext “Diamond Grill” written by Fred Wah, in which the narrator’s parents own a Chinese restaurant in Nelson, B.C., where they not only serve Chinese dishes that have been modified to suit the tastes of non-Chinese customers but also all kinds of other dishes that are not Chinese, such as pancakes for breakfast. According to the son of the “Shandhar Hut’s” owner, they do cook corresponding to their customers’ tastes in order to satisfy them all, so the food might be a little different than in India and for example less spicy. But since every dish always tastes different if it is cooked by different chefs, this seems to be a usual variation of tastes within the same dishes.

The fact that they exclusively serve Indian dishes also conduces to the longing for food from their home countries that many people living in the diaspora experience. Anita Mannur quotes the Ketu Katrak, an Indian American cultural critic in her essay Culinary Nostalgia: Authenticity, Nationalism, and Diaspora with the following statement: “The disinterest in food that I had felt during my childhood years was transformed into a new kind of need for that food as an essential connection with home. I longed for my native food as I dealt with my dislocation (…).” During the following dinners at the “Shandhar Hut” (of course after the first visit, there were more to follow), I usually noticed both customers of Indian ethnicity as well as any other ethnicity. The reasons to come to the restaurant might be different though, since Indo-Canadians might come to be reminded of their home culture by the authentic tastes because they might feel the same way as Ketu Katrak, and other Canadians might simply come to try a different ethnic cuisine every once in a while.

Not only the dishes served at the “Shandhar Hut” are very authentic but also the décor. As I mentioned above, the restaurant is designed to make the customers feel as if they were dining in an Indian hut. This feeling is created by Indian paintings (both ancient and contemporary and more modern styles) of people in India wearing traditional clothes and also by Indian sculptures. For example, there is a porcelain elephant sculpture and paintings of Northern-Punjab landscapes and Indian women making flour. All these pieces of art were imported from India. Furthermore, the dinnerware consists of metal plates and ornate cups and bowls for drinks and the entrées. All this decoration and dinnerware has also been imported from India in order to support the authenticity of the dishes with an authentic environment.

Not only was it an impressive experience to me to eat dinner at this Indian restaurant with its authentic décor and cuisine, but I also found evidence for its overwhelming reputation in the local area, since the “Shandhar Hut” was voted to be the favourite ethnic restaurant in Chilliwack in 2010. In an acknowledgment put up next to the counter of the restaurant the owner and his family thank their customers for voting for them and he expresses his honour of pleasing so many customers and of being able to “share [their] Indian culture and heritage”.

The experience of eating ‘awesome dinners’ at this local ethnic restaurant was very interesting to me because both other people living in the Diaspora as well as Canadians of other ethnicities than Indian enjoyed eating there and because it therefore functions as a contact zone between different ethnicities living together in multicultural Canada.

Mannur, Anita. “Culinary Nostalgia: Authenticity, Nationalism, and Diaspora.”   MELUS 32.4. (2007): 11-28.

Wah, Fred. Diamond Grill. Edmonton: NeWest, 1996. 

Shandhar Hut Indian Cuisine. 2010. Web. 3 May 2011.

Conclusion of my participation in the Diaspora Studies Consortium

In summary my participation in the Diaspora Studies Consortium in Canada was a positive experience for me not only on an academic level but also on a personal level.

First of all, studying in Canada was a completely different experience than studying in Germany, not only because the university systems are very different from each other but also because of the differences between the two countries and their cultures. Even though I had been to Canada several times before taking part in this exchange program and had also lived there for a few months, I still realized differences that I had not noticed before, which was maybe due to the fact that during my other trips to Canada I had mainly lived in rural areas and not in an urban centre like Abbotsford in the Fraser Valley. For example, it is hardly recommendable to live there without a car because the public transit in Abbotsford (and probably in other cities of the same size and not of the size of Vancouver or Toronto) is not comparable to the German or even western European public transportation systems. Taking the Greyhound bus, which serves as the main means of long distance transportation for people who do not own a car, is in my opinion more adventurous than taking the main means of long distance transportation in Germany, which is the Deutsche Bahn. Although in Germany everyone complains about the Deutsche Bahn, in my opinion it is still more useful than the Greyhound because the trains run more frequently and thus, the common delays of the trains do not appear to be as severe to me as the delays of the Greyhound that I experienced in Canada because for example from Abbotsford to Vancouver they only run seven times a day and not hourly like many trains in Germany. But on the other hand, a positive aspect of the Greyhound is that during the rides on the buses people are often sociable and sometimes interesting conversations take place.

The differences in the university systems of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster and the University of the Fraser Valley were mainly to be found in the different styles of teaching. At home in Germany students are expected to be more independent, whereas at UFV in Canada, students have to fulfil many different written tasks during the semester that are checked and marked by the teachers. In my opinion, both systems are reasonable and it probably only depends on what one is used to and what one’s personal preference is. To me, the experience of the Canadian system at UFV sometimes seemed as if responsibility was taken away from me, but at the same time, by splitting the grade into several smaller tasks that need to be fulfilled throughout the semester, the stress at the end of the semester to write one essay that compiles the grade along with a presentation is reduced.

           

What I especially liked about attending UFV was the outstanding sense of belonging to the university from the beginning on. The organization of many school events and regular activities and opportunities to get together with other UFV students outside of the classroom was assigned special attention. For example, there were lectures by different Canadian authors, cultural events like the Métis day, where we practised a traditional Métis dance and tasted homemade bannock bread, the weekly free pancake breakfast for all UFV students, several different intramural sports such as volleyball, dodgeball, basketball or pickle ball, get-togethers at the campus pub, or weekly changing ethnic dinners for a small contribution towards expenses. During all these events we got the chance to meet new friends who also attended UFV and thus, there was always a way to start a conversation with somebody. Last but not least, the feeling of togetherness was created through the games of the UFV sports teams, such as the basketball team, which was probably the most popular sport to watch at UFV, even though basketball is not Canada’s national sport. From the first week of classes on we almost watched every home game of the “UFV Cascades”. Despite the fact that I did not know any basketball rules and neither especially liked this sport before, I very much enjoyed cheering for our team and dressing up in the UFV colour green because it was another opportunity to get to know other students and to extend the feeling of belonging to UFV.

After a little while and in spite of some challenging times during the first weeks at UFV, I really felt like I belonged there and I felt at home in my room at the student residence called Baker House. The decision to move to Baker House turned out to be wise because that was where I met most of my friends that I made during the past four months in Canada. When I went to visit UFV and Baker House last summer, I realized how new the building was and that there were units for two students to share, so that I would not be too secluded in a single room. Furthermore, I already met some nice and welcoming students there and noticed that it would be very convenient to live with many other students in a house and to live on campus because public transport appeared to be complicated and slow.

Although I was comfortable living in Baker House and being close to my new friends there, I sometimes missed my home in Germany and things related with this. Therefore, every now and then I decided to cook some German dish that I would usually cook at home to feel better and to feel closer to Germany again and shared it with my friends to let them try some German food. In this respect I agree with Anita Mannur, whose article “Culinary Nostalgia: Authenticity, Nationalism, and Diaspora” we read in the Diaspora core course. In her essay there is a quotation of Ketu Katrak, an Indian American cultural critic, who states that living in the diaspora her former lack of interest in food from her childhood “was transformed into a new kind of need for that food as an essential connection with home” and that she “longed for [her] native food as [she] dealt with [her] dislocation” from her home in India. Even though of course I was not living in a diaspora in Canada because I was only going to stay there for a certain period of time, I think this made me understand the situation of people in living in the diaspora better.

Throughout the time living in Baker House, I kept on getting to know more and more people there and many of them were international students, who only stayed for one semester like me or who wanted to finish their studies in Canada. Some of my friends were Canadians, who were born outside of Canada, and others were born in Canada. What I found interesting was that for me it was never a question where I was from or what my ethnicity was, since I simply consider myself German. But for many people that I met in Canada, their origin seemed to matter more because actually almost all of them had been immigrants at some point of time or their ancestors had come to Canada from somewhere else long ago. I noticed that many Canadians are proud of their cultural and geographic origin. Often they mentioned the countries where their grandparents or even previous relatives came from, but I am not sure if they only did that because talking to me as a German probably made them mention it. Several Canadians that I talked to also pointed out that they still speak the language of their or their relatives’ country of origin or celebrate festivities the way that is common in their home culture. This was an example of multiculturalism in practice in Canada besides the many different religions that can be noticed when driving through Abbotsford or Vancouver, which are practised in the diaspora.

To sum up, I also learned a lot in the classes that I took at UFV and I especially enjoyed my Canadian Literature class because it was a unique opportunity for me to learn about this literature right on the spot. I was able to extend my interest in First Nations’ Literature and culture and I am intending to pursue this interest in my studies in Germany.

I am very glad that I got the chance to take part in the Diaspora Studies Consortium and attend the University of the Fraser Valley because I was given the chance to learn a lot, not only during classes at UFV, but also during my free time, and because I brought back unforgettable memories and new friendships that will hopefully persist for a long time.

I can recommend taking part in the Diaspora Studies Consortium to anyone interested in applying for it and in my opinion students at the English Department of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster should take advantage of the opportunity of this new exchange program with Canada.

A Successful Example of Practised Multiculturalism: The Mill Town Mayo on Vancouver Island in the 1920s

In an edition of the British Columbia Magazine I found an article written by Frances Backhouse on the multicultural community of the mill town Mayo (later renamed Paldi) located in the southeast of Vancouver Island, which was established in 1917 by the Punjab businessman Maiya Singh, who was later called Mayo (an anglicized version of his name).

At the time when the mill and the settlement were built, racism and prejudice were daily occurrences, but Mayo Singh successfully set up this “multiethnic community”, in which Indian immigrants lived peacefully among Japanese, Chinese or European immigrants. Despite the restrictions of immigration specified by the Canadian government, such as the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 and the 1908 prohibition of Indian immigration until 1919, the situation in Mayo showed that multiculturalism could be practised even at that early stage of Canadian history. Although the Multiculturalism Act only came into force in 1988 (but was first mentioned by Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau in 1971), Mayo Singh already had the ideal way of different ethnicities living together in mind and did well in creating an exemplified settlement, where this was the case.

Subsequent to working in several jobs, such as working in sawmills in the Fraser Valley, for ten years after his immigration to Canada from the Punjab region in India, Mayo Singh and his partners founded the Mayo Lumber Company in 1916 and from the beginning on hired different ethnic employees, such as Japanese people he knew from the Fraser Valley or Chinese railway workers he had met earlier, when he was working for the Canadian Pacific Railway. However, within the community the jobs available were often assigned to certain ethnicities, such as carpenters, who were mainly Japanese and who, among other buildings, built the Sikh temple in Mayo. Besides the Japanese workers, there were Chinese ones, who built a private railroad for the community, and also Punjabi and Caucasian men, who mainly worked at the mill itself, where they were paid the highest wages. This imbalance in the employment seems racist and dividing “along ethnic lines” at first sight, but it was probably rather the case that everybody within the community of Mayo and the Mayo Lumber company did the job they were best at and that they had been trained to do before they came to Mayo. It might seem that the Punjabi men were paid higher wages because the founder of the company was of Punjab origin himself, but how would that explain the high payment of the Caucasian workers?

It is more likely that people were paid according to their skills, and not according to their ethnicity, as the general situation among all residents of Mayo is described as being very peaceful and tolerant towards each other in the article. Everybody soon attended the same school, ate the same food together, and the residents even discovered similarities of their different cuisines, such as flatbread, which is called rroti in Punjab and bottera in Japanese, as it is said in the article.

Unfortunately, in the course of World War II the fall of the community of Mayo commenced, as Japanese people were removed from the West Coast in order to protect Canada. With the relocation of the Japanese residents others left Mayo, too, and when the mill closed in 1945, there were no jobs for the remaining residents left, which caused them to move away as well.

In general, I think that Mayo Singh’s concept was exemplary for Canada and its uniqueness of multiculturalism by law and by the example of this tiny community of ethnically diverse people living in the diaspora in the early 20^th century, multiculturalism can be furthered and fixed in people’s minds.  

British Columbia Magazine. Vol. 52, June 2010

Reading Wendy Lill’s play "Glace Bay Miners’ Museum" and watching the adaptation "Margaret’s Museum"

In my class Canadian Literature we read the play "Glace Bay Miners’ Museum" written by Wendy Lill (based on the novel by Sheldon Currie) and at the end of the discussion of the play, we watched the movie adaptation called "Margaret’s Museum". The play is considered to be a memory play, and with regards to diaspora, it might also be called a diasporic play because a careful observer can notice several aspects of diaspora throughout the play and also the movie adaptation.

The play as well as the movie adaptation consist of memories recalled by the main character Margaret, who used to live with her mother, her grandfather, and her brother in the settlement surrounding the Glace Bay mine on the Canadian east coast, and who has already lost her father and her older brother in a fatal accident in the mine. The play is a retrospective told by Margaret, who is mentally distorted in the present because she has not only lost her father and older brother, but also her husband and her youngest brother. Since Margaret’s family is not First Nation Canadian, they are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, who came to Canada at an undisclosed point of time in the past. Margaret’s family cannot really considered to be living in the diaspora at first because they do not practise any culturally distinct traditions that would show their connection to their homeland. But when Margaret falls in love with Neil Currie, who is still very closely connected to his home country through the knowledge of the Gaelic language and Gaelic traditional music and memories of his own or that were passed on by his relatives, the family’s connection to their homeland is revitalized.

In fact, it is Margaret’s mute grandfather, who remembers the Gaelic tunes that Neil plays on his bagpipes and he is therefore reminded of his cultural origin, which has been buried in oblivion during the past years of his life. The reasons for the neglect of their cultural roots and country of origin are not mentioned in neither the play nor the movie adaptation, but they can probably be found in the struggle to survive with the low wages paid in the mining industry and the tragic loss of the father and the older son of the family because this means that there is one person less to support the family.

It is possible that in other cases families like the one in this play would especially cling to their cultural roots under the given circumstances because they are dissatisfied with their situation. The initial reasons for immigrants like this family or their ancestors to come to Canada were probably grounded in the hope for a better life and they did not expect such struggles as they now face in the mining industry. The family presented in the play however, completely suppresses its cultural origins (probably Scottish, but it is never literally mentioned in the play) at first and only when Neil enters the family, the grandfather’s memories are revived and therefore the younger generations of the mother and Margaret and her brother Ian (Jimmy in the movie adaptation) are reminded of their cultural origins.

Even though the family does not really go back to practising their Gaelic culture and therefore are not members of a diaspora, they are at least made aware of it again by the appearance of Neil Currie, who, in my opinion, can be considered as living in the diaspora. The role of memory in this play and movie adaptation is important with regard to diaspora because memories of the home country are usually central within diasporas. In this play and movie memories are given special significance because on the one hand, the whole play and movie consist of Margaret’s memories, and on the other hand, Neil’s memories of his culture evoke memories in the grandfather’s mind that have long been forgotten.

Russell Peters - Deconstructing Stereotypes Through Comedy

The Canadian comedian Russell Peters is famous for his ironic performances in which he confronts his racially diverse audience with stereotypical associations of different nationalities. His jokes at first seem to be very racist and offensive towards the different nationalities that he deals with in his performances. But since he often addresses his audience directly and asks which nationalities are present at the time of performance, he shows that his comedy is open to everyone and that he does not joke about others behind their backs. It seems that the secret of his worldwide overwhelming success is that he does not only joke at the expense of other nations’ stereotypes but also about his own Indo-Canadian cultural background. By making fun of Indian people living in diaspora in Canada and thus of his own people, he ridicules other stereotypes at the same time, because it seems as if every nation in the world is depicted in other people’s minds by stereotypes. This technique of Peters supports the deconstruction of stereotypes even though at first they seem to be reinforced by him. By making them such obvious stereotypes, he makes his audience understand that they should not think in such categories and that not all citizens of a nation or every immigrant to another nation are the same.

During my research of online videos of Russell Peters’s performances, one especially caught my attention: in “Immigrant parents” Peters deals with these parents and their way of treating their children in Canada. In this performance he tells his audience about the stereotypical ways in which Canadian immigrants supposedly treat their children. For example, Ukrainian immigrants are supposed to hit their children with a cabbage roll, whereas Chinese immigrants supposedly hit their children in the style of Kung Fu. According to Peters, the stereotype of White people in Canada is however, that they do not hit their children at all. But since everyone else in Canada seems to hit their children, he advises White Canadians to do so, too, so that the White Canadian children do not feel left out and become “social outcasts” themselves. Everyone in the audience should be able to understand the meaning behind this technique. On the one hand, sadly but truly, everybody must know that it cannot be true that no White Canadian ever hits their children. So this must be a stereotype created by people outside the Canadian society. On the other hand, Peters even goes as far as to turn the table insofar as he lets the White Canadian children become the “social outcasts” of the Canadian society. He gives an example of immigrant children other than White who meet a White child on the playground for the first time. Their reaction is that they were curious to actually see a White child because they have been told so much them. This seems to be an intended inversion of what probably usually happens when White children see a dark-skinned person for the first time in their life.

Another performance by Russell Peters deals with the assumption that “the whole world is mixing”. In this performance Peters tries to convince his audience that not far from the present time, all human beings in the world will be of the same skin colour, namely “beige”, because all races will be mixed to an extent that differences in skin colour will have disappeared. This reminds me of a computer created picture of “the new face of America”, that appeared in the Time magazine in 1993. The woman’s face was created by the mixing of physical features of Anglo-Saxon, Middle Eastern, African, Asian, Southern European, and Latino people (Spickard, 12f).

In his performance, Peters suggests that it is not worth waiting for a mixing by chance but that people should start mixing now. That would lead to possible results of mixed children from different nationalities or cultures, such as “Hollapinos” (Hollander and Phillippino), “Icecubes” (Icelander and Cuban), “Hinjews” (Hindu and Jewish), or “Freek” (French and Greek). This mixing of races and people of different cultural backgrounds can be seen as a possible outcome of worldwide migration processes.

Russell Peters whole world's mixing

Fieldtrip to the Stó:lō First Nation Community

As part of my Stó:lō History class at the University of the Fraser Valley we went on a field trip to the Stó:lō Nation community in Chilliwack, B.C., which consists of different First Nations tribes who live in the Fraser Valley. The Stó:lō Nation therefore also call themselves “the People of the River”. In the 1960s the Department of Indian Affairs grouped twenty four different tribes living in the Fraser Valley between Fort Langley and Yale into the East Fraser District Council and in 1994 the Stó:lō Nation was finally formed on the agreement of all tribes included. The Stó:lō Nation is a facility in Chilliwack that serves different purposes, such as a daycare centre, an educational centre, an elders’ lodge, and a gallery. They describe themselves as an organization that focuses on the “social and economic development within the Stó:lō community through facilities and programs in the areas of education, human resource development, early childhood and youth services, health, elderly care, and social development”.

During our fieldtrip to the Stó:lō Nation our class was taken on a guided tour of the site by our teacher, who is a member of the Stó:lō Nation herself. First, we were invited into the longhouse of the nation, which did not have any windows and only small chimneys in the roof to release the smoke of the two fires that were burning inside. Longhouses used to be the homes of the families of a tribe and could literally become longer when they were extended for more families to move in. The longhouse on the grounds of the Stó:lō Nation in Chilliwack is still in use for traditional ceremonies that take place throughout the year. Our class was lucky to be invited to a singing and dancing performance in this longhouse during the fieldtrip. A member of the Stó:lō Nation drummed and sang while traditionally dressed teenage girls were dancing barefoot on the loamy ground. One of the girls was my teacher’s daughter, which exemplifies that the transmission of traditions still plays an important role among the members of the Stó:lō Nation. Furthermore, we watched a dancing performance of young boys and girls, in which they represented the traditional gender roles within the Stó:lō Nation. While the boys were in charge of representing the men’s duty of fishing, the girls demonstrated the Stó:lō women’s duty of collecting berries. Again, the drummer was proud to announce that one of the young boys was his son.

Similarly to this, a woman told us a traditional Stó:lō story, which had been passed on from generation to generation. Since she still knows many traditional stories, she can pass them on to today’s younger generation so that the traditions and the history of the tribe do not get lost. I suppose that in the educational centre of the Stó:lō Nation, children are taught about their history and also about the traditional dances, songs, and stories. This seems to be a successful way to revive the Stó:lō culture, which had been suppressed for several hundred years by the European colonizers. After being pushed to the margin of society by the colonizers and being taken away from their families and sent to residential schools as children in order to be assimilated, there finally seems to be a way for First Nations to revitalize their culture and to pass it on to their children. During the time of colonization, the First Nations of Canada were forced to live on reserves and therefore had to live in exile within their own country.