When Carrie Kellenberger was a child, her family celebrated Canada Day by roasting marshmallows on a big barbecue at their cottage by the lake in North Bay, Ontario.
“I am from a very small town in Ontario and my family lived in the country,” says Kellenberger, who serves as a chairperson for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Taipei.
“From time to time, we’d also go into town to celebrate at our annual hometown Canada Day celebration at the local riverside park.”
Photo courtesy of Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan
Tomorrow’s Canada Day event at Taipei Hakka Cultural Park will seek to recreate this homely, celebratory vibe in a similar outdoor, natural setting.
The annual celebration, now in its 11th year, will offer a range of Canadian treats such as maple pie, as well as imported beer and cider from the Great White North. This year will see the addition of an art corner, along with the usual attractions, including hockey, line dancing, fireworks and activities geared toward young visitors: a face painting booth and bouncy castle. Not to mention the mechanical bull, which has proven to be hugely popular among visitors of all ages in previous years.
“You’d be surprised how many people take a ride on the mechanical bull,” Kellenberger tells the Taipei Times.
Photo courtesy of Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan
Though she left Canada in 2003 to travel the world and eventually settled down in Taiwan in 2006, Kellenberger still believes that it’s important for expats to keep their traditions alive.
“For expats, the longer we are away from our home country, the more important our traditions become.”
One tradition we will not be seeing tomorrow is the Canadian Snowbirds show, an air show put on by the Canadian Forces at Parliament Hill in the nation’s capital city, Ottawa, each year. Kellenberger recalls attending the air show as a young adult, something which she describes as being “always exciting.”
She adds, though, that in some ways, Canada Day celebrations abroad are more of a novelty because they’re also about sharing your culture, food and crafts with people from other backgrounds.
“It’s important for all of us to come together to celebrate the rich and diverse tapestry of communities in Taiwan.”
On April 26, The Lancet published a letter from two doctors at Taichung-based China Medical University Hospital (CMUH) warning that “Taiwan’s Health Care System is on the Brink of Collapse.” The authors said that “Years of policy inaction and mismanagement of resources have led to the National Health Insurance system operating under unsustainable conditions.” The pushback was immediate. Errors in the paper were quickly identified and publicized, to discredit the authors (the hospital apologized). CNA reported that CMUH said the letter described Taiwan in 2021 as having 62 nurses per 10,000 people, when the correct number was 78 nurses per 10,000
As Donald Trump’s executive order in March led to the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA) — the global broadcaster whose roots date back to the fight against Nazi propaganda — he quickly attracted support from figures not used to aligning themselves with any US administration. Trump had ordered the US Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that funds VOA and other groups promoting independent journalism overseas, to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” The decision suddenly halted programming in 49 languages to more than 425 million people. In Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, the hardline editor-in-chief of the
Six weeks before I embarked on a research mission in Kyoto, I was sitting alone at a bar counter in Melbourne. Next to me, a woman was bragging loudly to a friend: She, too, was heading to Kyoto, I quickly discerned. Except her trip was in four months. And she’d just pulled an all-nighter booking restaurant reservations. As I snooped on the conversation, I broke out in a sweat, panicking because I’d yet to secure a single table. Then I remembered: Eating well in Japan is absolutely not something to lose sleep over. It’s true that the best-known institutions book up faster
Though the total area of Penghu isn’t that large, exploring all of it — including its numerous outlying islands — could easily take a couple of weeks. The most remote township accessible by road from Magong City (馬公市) is Siyu (西嶼鄉), and this place alone deserves at least two days to fully appreciate. Whether it’s beaches, architecture, museums, snacks, sunrises or sunsets that attract you, Siyu has something for everyone. Though only 5km from Magong by sea, no ferry service currently exists and it must be reached by a long circuitous route around the main island of Penghu, with the
RSS