I always take great pleasure in telling people that I am from Manitoba &mdash an answer that usually seems unexpected, despite being completely banal. I often add, "Where all the real Canadians are from," as if I were an American from the Midwest attempting to cash in on some folksy ideal of the heartland promulgated by the likes of Garrison Keillor.

Fortunately, we have no such mythology in this country about a singular Canadian identity, but have always embraced a plurality of experiences. Constantly seeking to define ourselves through the diversity of our culture and heritage seems to be the quintessential Canadian pastime.


I was born in Gladstone, a small town with a population of less than 1,000 that attempted, quite laughably, to re-brand itself in the 1970s as 'Happy Rock' in order to attract tourists. I stayed there only 5 years, but that brief period had a significant and lasting effect on my attachment to the Prairies. Living at the edge of town next to the Yellowhead Highway, I would watch the trucks drive by, ferrying loads of grain and livestock against a backdrop of expansive wheat fields.


I couldn't have asked for a more idyllic childhood: playing in wooded streams, swimming in dugouts, tearing around my friend's farm in his father's pickup when we were barely old enough to see over the steering wheel, and shooting gophers with a .22 caliber rifle. A friend of mine often tells me she feels comforted when surrounded by tall buildings. I feel most at home standing in the middle of a flax field in late summer under a clear blue sky.

After I finished kindergarten, my family moved to Brandon, which was only an hour away from our previous home. My father was tired of being a country doctor and sought a lighter workload. Despite being 40 times the population of Gladstone, Brandon, Manitoba is hardly a city. While I would consider it my hometown, I've never really felt a strong connection to it. Neither of my parents are from there, and neither of them had any particular deep ties to the community.

Although my father is a second-generation Canadian, both of my parents come from families of immigrants many times over. The Mennonite side of my family has been kicked out of more countries in Eastern and Western Europe than I have space to list, and my mother's family emigrated from Southern China to Taiwan a number of generations ago, and from who knows where before that. I spent a great deal of my childhood visiting relatives in faraway places. I remember long and frequent car trips, trains, planes, and Christmases spent in airports, waiting for connecting flights in Vancouver or Hong Kong. All that traveling left me with a strong distaste for air travel and long distance driving. Many of my summers, especially during elementary school, were spent in Taipei, which is where my mother is from - a city that couldn't be more different than a small town on the Prairies. The skyscrapers, the smog, but mostly the drenching humidity were a stark contrast to dry heat and clean air of the Prairies where the tallest building for miles was usually a grain elevator.

My uncles and aunts would take me around their bustling neighborhoods to the crowded markets, or to buy pot stickers and fried meat buns from busy street vendors. I still firmly believe that the best food you can find anywhere is usually the food sold on the street. When not summering in Taiwan, I would often find myself in Mennonite country in Southern Manitoba. Faspa, an afternoon luncheon of homemade buns, jams and cold cuts was mandatory anytime we stopped by to visit a relative. The best foods, like vereneki, kielke noodles, and rhubarb platz were usually reserved for communal meals; and rollkuchen (deep-fried dough twists) and watermelons were a must for church picnics.



I had the strange experience of often feeling like an outsider amongst my own family. Both my mother and father grew up speaking already obscure dialects of languages I have only a marginal familiarity with. My Mandarin Chinese is, or at least used to be, passable. Unfortunately, the Taiwanese side of my family speaks Hakka. The only words I recognize are the insults my grandmother used to, and still does, hurl at me when I was cause trouble. My knowledge of Plattdüütsch, or Low German, is even more limited. There's nothing like spending an afternoon sitting around listening to your relatives converse in a language you have absolutely no understanding of. It's an incredibly frustrating and boring experience, especially for a young child, which may explain why I now have very little patience for enduring both people and conversations that don't interest me.



For the entirety of my school years, from kindergarten through to the 12th grade, I was the only Asian in my class. A fact which probably would have gone unnoticed, considering most people think I'm Jewish. The dumplings in my lunch box were the dead giveaway. Although, I did endure a certain amount of ribbing for my unusual lunches, I probably got made fun of more for the meat loaf sandwiches. My mother, in an effort to become more Westernized, had taken to making things out of Canadian Living and cookbooks clearly from a number of decades earlier. The one actual Jewish kid managed to go unnoticed in the lunch room, because his corned beef sandwiches, always on rye, were close enough to baloney on Wonder Bread thus avoiding too much attention.



My educational experience perfectly illustrated the post-colonial, bilingual nation that we are. To say that I attended a French immersion school wouldn't be entirely accurate. My school was divided between the middle- and upper-middle-class French immersion kids, "Us"; and the English kids from largely Aboriginal, inner-city, low-income families, "Them". None of the French immersion students were from the neighborhood surrounding the school. The tensions that existed between the more privileged French kids and the English kids whom we displaced manifested themselves on a regular basis. From the insults exchanged in the halls to the occasional fights on the playground, for the most part, we did not mix. This is not something I ever gave too much thought to as a child, but is obviously something that has stayed with me. It is also something I now see again on a daily basis, living close to the Downtown Eastside.



After finishing high school in 1997, I was drawn to the West Coast, partly to attend university, but also partly due to my attachment to the mountains and lush forests I associate with visiting my paternal grandparents in BC. After a brief interlude living in Montreal from 2000-2005 for more school, and an even shorter stint in Toronto, I returned to Vancouver in 2007, but this time more out of nostalgia for the foods I enjoyed so much as a child in Taiwan. Good Chinese restaurants in Montreal are few and far between.

My fixation on the cuisine of my respective heritages isn't purely coincidental. Not only do tastes and smells have the strongest connections to our emotional memories but food was often the only way to connect with my family when direct communication was limited by language barriers. Food is a great medium to experience another culture. I love taking people around the city and introducing them to things they've never tried before, whether it be at an out of the way bubble tea café in Richmond, or a little known Szechuan restaurant in Burnaby.

Now that my parents have also moved to the West Coast and my family and friends are spread across the globe, my connection to Manitoba remains tenuous at best. I have now lived in Vancouver, cumulatively, longer than anywhere else I've lived in my adult life. I may not be from here, but Vancouver is definitely home. I just need to find a place that serves authentic farmer sausage.