2 minute read
Always in all ways
HERITAGE WEEK - FEBRUARY 20 - 26, 2023
BY ANN NELSON
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It’s a beautiful thing, to be reminded to grow our appreciation for the richness and diversity of our cultural and built heritage every year: kinda like the traditional feast times of our lives around the mid-winter, spring and harvest celebrations in all our varied and diverse cultures.
We prepare ourselves for months in advance to celebrate these annual milestones, as well as the birthdays and anniversaries that define our personal lives, but then they’ve come and are gone again in an instant.
These past nearly three years of COVID pandemic awareness and prevention protocols lurking in the forefront of all our thoughts and activities have awakened another awareness in my consciousness as well: I’ve never been so grateful for small things to celebrate every day of my life. We need to be able to celebrate, or at least remember, the positive, the beautiful, the traditional, the beloved things that make up our day-to-day lives in between the big landmark festivities each year.
My appreciation for the cultural diversity of my community and my country of choice grows with every passing day, in every way. We may glibly speak of the ‘melting pot’ of immigrants who’ve been drawn to Canada in search of better lives, without having been forced to give up the best of their original cultures in the process of assimilation, but the reality is that we’ve been privileged by our circumstances here to retain the best of what came with us and add it to the rich culture and traditions of our indigenous neighbours.
No matter how bleak our days may sometimes appear to us, we are buoyed up by the daily opportunities to acknowledge and celebrate our heritage as a diverse community: it may be simply opting for an international food for lunch, or visiting with some newly arrived immigrant neighbours at a gathering, or learning a ‘pioneer’ skill from one of our elders, or learning how to speak a couple of words in the ayajuthum.
Truly, this is the year to be reminded that we can always celebrate our rich heritage in all ways, every day of our lives and that it is a true gift to have something to celebrate.
