By Stephanie Farrington
Every second Sunday, the McNabb commmunity centre on Percy Street is redolent with the smell of home-cooked curry.
In the dance studio a group of people practice Filipino martial arts. A few boys play basketball in the gym. Two groups of Vietnamese children are in another room learning about Buddhism.
In the main room, a “family gathering” is in full swing. There are children everywhere. The women are swathed in silk. Their traditional ensembles of peacock blue, fuchsia and canary yellow give the cement-walled room the feeling of a lush tropical summer, even on an iron-grey winter afternoon.
This particular feast marks Eid, the end of Ramadan. Someone suggests we try a rice dish, and puts a piece of chicken on my plate. So we eat.
This “family gathering” has been taking place every second Sunday for the last six years. All of the families immigrated to Ottawa from Bangladesh. They meet every two weeks to eat, discuss Islam and preserve their cultural heritage.
Sultana Ferdousi, a graceful woman in a pink and green brocade sari, introduces me to her daughter, Bushra, the co-host of the event.
Bushra Kahn was born and raised in Canada. A second-year student of pharmaceutical research at the University of Ottawa, Kahn is trilingual.
Her family spoke Bengali and French in their home, assuming English would come later. When they arrived in Ottawa from Montreal 11 years ago, Kahn was sent to English classes, like her friend Towfiqa Yasmeen.
Yasmeen laughs as she remembers. “When I was 12, all my friends were reading Lord of the Rings, and I was reading, See Jane. See Jane run,” she says.
Yasmeen, a third-year computer engineering student at Carleton University, was born in Bangladesh.
She came to Canada in 1992 with her parents. Her kameez is unusual. Made of black, white and red cotton, it is covered in graffiti script reading rock steady – no doubt. “Like the album cover,” she says. “I like to keep our culture but also to mix with this culture, I call it fusion.” Yasmeen and Kahn consider the question of where their families will be in the future. Both say they see future generations as hard workers living in Canada but maintaining their cultural roots.
“They’ll probably be more westernized than us, but I hope they keep their culture,” says Kahn.