Keep Toronto Reading Month

April is Keep Toronto Reading month, which the Toronto public libraries have been celebrating with literary events including authors readings, book signings, book club meetings, panel discussions, presentations, demonstrations and activities for kids, all to promote the love of reading.  I wanted to go to a reading by Andrew Pyper, the author of the last book (The Guardians) read by my book club but unfortunately it was during a work day.

I did attend a presentation by former librarian and now author Arlene Chan titled "From Chop Suey to Peking Duck: The Evolution of Chinese Food in Toronto".  Growing up, Arlene worked at Kwong Chow, her parents' Chinese restaurant in downtown Toronto. She has written a book called "The Chinese in Toronto from 1878: From Outside to Inside the Circle", which will be coming out in November.  Her presentation gave a brief history of how and why the Chinese emigrated to Canada and then Toronto, and how Chinese restaurants evolved over time.

She talked about the various regions of China and how the climate, terrain and growing potential influenced the food and styles of cooking.  For example, while rice is the staple of southern China because it could be easily grown, Northern China dealt mostly in wheat products including breads and dumplings.  The most interesting part of her talk revolved around her mother Jean Lumb, who fought to save the initial Chinatown when land was being expropriated to build the New City Hall.  Jean was the first Chinese female to win the Order of Canada for this and numerous other community contributions.  The evening ended with a tastings of Chinese delicacies and a discussion about how fortune cookies and chop suey are not really Chinese food!

Books about the Chinese must be a main theme for this year's festival since the featured book was on the same topic.  It was called "Midnight at the Dragon Cafe" and I attended a book club meeting that was led by the author Judy Fong Bates.

The book is about a family immigrated from China to small town  Irvine Ontario, trying to make a living as the only Chinese family in town while running a small restaurant.  The book deals with themes of unhappiness, isolation and loneliness, familial duty battling against personal dreams and desires. The author paints a vivid picture of what the life was like for Chinese immigrants in small towns in the 1960s.  She draws you into this world through in-depth details mined from her own immigrant childhood growing up in Acton, Ontario where her family owned a laundry. 

The story is told from the point of view of Su-Jen, the young daughter of the family.  She is caught between the old customs, superstitions and the importance of saving face of her family versus the new western ways of her friends and townspeople, which she is quickly adopting as her own.  Through her eyes, many secrets and plot points are innocently foreshadowed before coming to fruition. 

Although my family came to Canada around the same period, my own childhood in downtown Toronto was quite different. I was too young to remember much about Hong Kong so I never experienced the family's feelings of alienation.  We first moved into the Chinatown area in Toronto, so in my early school days, the little white boy was the minority in my class.  However I did recognize many of the particulars and traditions described in the book, which had a very authentic and sometimes almost stereotypical feel.  Rich is currently also reading the book so it will be interesting to hear his perspective as a Caucasian reader.  Had he read it prior to meeting me, the cultural shock would have been greater, but so far he still has gained much insight into "what it feels like to be a stranger in a strange land".
 
Judy Fong Bates is a vivacious speaker and spent most of the book club meeting fielding questions both about the plot of the book, as well as questions about her life in contrast to the heroine in the book, her writing processes and career.  She is a gifted story teller and told many amusing anecdotes during the Q&A.  She explained that she didn't start writing until her 40s because as a young girl without any other Chinese role models, she did not feel what she had to say was interesting or worthy of sharing. While the book is not autobiographical, she did claim to relate to many of the themes explored.

She wrapped up the meeting with a reading from the book. While she spoke English with absolutely no accent, when she read phoneticized Chinese dialogue from the book, she easily switched to perfectly pronounced Chinese village dialect that was obviously her mother tongue. 

Recently on one of our walks, we stumbled upon a plaque that stands at the North East end of the Bloor viaduct. It describes an enthralling tale of the building of the bridge and an incident where a woman almost plunged to her death but is saved, at least temporarily, by a worker who had been dangling underneath doing repair work.  At first I thought this was one of the many historical plaques that are found throughout Toronto.  I was mesmerized by the lyrical description of the story, made all the more poignant by standing at the spot where the action took place.  Looking at it more closely, I realized that this was actually an excerpt from Michael Ondaatje's book "In the Skin of a Lion". This was a plaque for Project Bookmark Canada.

Project Bookmark Canada celebrates Canadian writing by placing bookmarks across Canada that mark real locations featured in fictionalized stories and poems.  There are two more bookmarks in Toronto (Anne Michael's Fugitive Pieces at the corner of College and Manning, Ken Babcock's poem "Essentialist" across from St. George subway) as well as ones in Ottawa, Owen Sound and Kingston.  There is currently a call out for readers to find locations in Vancouver and hopefully this is just the start of many more to come across Canada.