National Post
July 1, 2007
The Post's Jeremy Sandler writes about how Toronto's nascent Tibetan community is trying to keep its culture alive.
Walking along Queen West West in Toronto, it is hard to miss the growing influence of Parkdale's burgeoning population of Tibetan immigrants.
From traditional Tibetan momo dumplings on offer at restaurants like the Tibet Kitchen and Shangri-La Cafe to faces on the streets of the reviving neighbourhood, the community -- estimated by the Canadian Tibetan Association of Ontario to number about 4,000 -- is pretty much everywhere.
But until Thursday night, the one place the community was not represented was on the library shelves of Parkdale Public School.
Toronto's Tibetan population is thought to trail only the New York City area in terms of Tibetans outside of Asia, and it is not uncommon for 25% of students in classes to be Tibetan -- that number sometimes pushes closer to 50% -- but there were no children's books about Tibet and the stories of its emigrants.
Instead of accepting the situation, the Tibetan Book Club at the school, under the leadership of librarian Vivienne Young and principal Ernie Boulton, published Tibet: Our Lives, Our Stories. Unveiled Thursday night, the picture/ storybook that was born at a lunchtime homework club last January chronicles both the immigrant experience of Tibetans moving to Toronto and Tibetan culture.
Helped by staff advisors, the book's vibrant drawings, thoughtful photographs and heartwarming tales of moving to a new country are almost entirely the work of students in the Tibetan Book Club.
"The most important thing to me is that it was kids that did this," says Boulton. "It's kids' voices. I think it's purer that way. That was my goal, to make sure that it wasn't authored all over the place or presented as an adult thing."
Tsering Wangmo, the student editor of the book, contributed her story as part of the basis for the project.
The fourth of five children, the 13-year-old spent eight years living with her siblings and mother in Nepal while her father worked in Toronto to secure visas for the family.
"I hope it makes other children who have emigrated from other countries express their experiences and how they feel about immigrating to Canada," says Wangmo, who in two-and-a-half years has gone from a shy new student to this year's valedictorian for the Grade 8 graduating class. "I think it lets other people know how it is to emigrate from another country and go through all the things. The hardships and learning new languages or getting used to the lifestyle. It just lets them know that it's very hard and it's also a good thing."
Amanda Foley, a French teacher who served as a staff advisor for the project, says the book does an important job of capturing the current inflow of Tibetan immigrants.
"We might not have been able to write this story five years from now," says Foley, whose post-graduate sociology work at the University of Toronto focused on ethnographic studies.
She noted that, already, some Tibetan families are beginning a second move out to suburban communities away from their initial inner-city neighbourhood.
"This is almost a moment in time because five years from now, Parkdale might be a totally different place."
What will not be different are the Tibetan traditions the book tries to pass on.
With its emphasis on Tibetan culture, from lucky signs to mind's-eye pictures of Tibet drawn by the students, the book is helping preserve a culture that Tibet's highest leader, the Dalai Lama, says is under threat.
None of the children who wrote in the book have actually been to Tibet; this is also true of most of their parents. With the country occupied by China since 1949, most of the parents of book club members grew up in exile in either Nepal or Northern India.
Norbu Tsering, president of the Canadian Tibetan Association of Ontario, says the book and its explanation of Tibetan cultures will help preserve the traditions. For a community living through a diaspora, Tsering says this is doubly important.
"We being Tibetan, especially our younger ages, I think it's a great opportunity and responsibility to share this," he says. "Further down generations, we don't know when we're able to go back. But traditions -- you can convey the stories, you can convey the facts, generation to generation. That will be a really good option to keep alive our culture, religion and history."
jsandler@nationalpost.com
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