Fiesta

By Walter Kish

Traditionally the week following Father’s Day is Fiesta Week in Oshawa where I live.  Fiesta is a multicultural festival patterned on the long running Metro International Caravan festival that used to take place each year in Toronto until it finally died out some five years ago.  For the price of a passport, visitors could visit ethnic pavilions all over Toronto and sample each culture’s food, culture and entertainment.

It spawned similar festivals in many communities throughout Ontario and indeed throughout Canada.  Mississauga still has one every year called Carassauga.  The Niagara Region holds its annual Folk Arts Festival, and of course Oshawa has its Fiesta Week as mentioned earlier.

Caravan may be but a distant memory, but Oshawa’s Fiesta is still alive and doing well.  Although the number of pavilions is down from the dozens that used to open their doors when it was in its prime, there are still fourteen slated to feed and entertain Oshawa’s throngs this year.  They cover a broad spectrum of the region’s diverse community, including those from the Caribbean, Poland, Greece, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Quebec, Serbia, Hungary and three Ukrainian ones – Dnipro, Lviv and Odesa.  There used to be a fourth – Kyiv – operated by the UNF, but it disappeared when the local UNF branch disbanded in the nineties.

I have fond memories of the UNF Kyiv Pavilion.  I used to perform with the UNF Hall’s dancing group – three performances a night for six nights.  By the time of the last evening’s performance, we were exhilarated but totally spent, and many pounds lighter from when we started.  It was the highlight of the year’s activities, and a vital one in terms of revenue which the Hall depended on for its existence.

Of course, the scale and professionalism of what we did in Oshawa could not compare to what we experienced when we visited our counterparts in Toronto during Caravan.  I can recall that the show at the Kyiv Pavilion at the UNF Toronto Hall on College Street when the festival was at its peak was a wonder to behold.  With a real orchestra and a cast in the choir and dancing group that probably reached a hundred, the performances were, to say the least, spectacular.  The Hall was perpetually packed during Caravan week, and I am sure that the Hall was probably one of the most financially successful pavilions of all those participating.

I still find it puzzling why Caravan fell apart.  The cynics say that its fortunes paralleled those of Canada’s policy on Multiculturalism which enjoyed its heyday during the seventies and eighties.  During that time, the federal government not only promoted the concept of multiculturalism but funnelled significant funds to various ethnic groups and multicultural programs.  These eventually dried up in recent decades and now multiculturalism itself is being assailed as a desirable social policy.

Another factor undoubtedly is the fact that the constituent ethnic organizations that were the backbone of Caravan have experienced significant decline as the post World War II immigrant wave that fuelled their growth and activism has died off and the vast majority of their children have become assimilated into the Canadian mainstream culture.  Those ethnic organizations that have survived, no longer have the strength or dedication to mount the kind of effort that something like Caravan requires.

There is also a more practical straightforward reason.  Thirty years ago, there were nowhere near the number and variety of ethnic restaurants that there are today and eating at a Caravan ethnic pavilion was viewed as an exotic experience.  Nowadays, in Toronto, you can find the cuisine of virtually any country or region of the world.  The fact is that Toronto has become so multicultural, that something like Caravan is no longer something different or exotic.  The same can be said of ethnic entertainment which can be found in an incredible variety, either live or through the unlimited media of cable, satellite and the Internet.

Change is inevitable, but at least here in Oshawa next week [June 21-27], I will be making the rounds of the various pavilions and recapturing a little bit of that experience that I so enjoyed when I was much younger.  I may not be able to dance like I used too, but my enjoyment of and capacity for ethnic food, especially Ukrainian, remains undiminished!