Different cultures shone in downtown Humboldt Sept. 30 to Oct. 1 for the nationwide Culture Days event.
Humboldt was just one of hundreds of cities and towns across Canada that took part with the Humboldt Cultural Services, the Community Gathering Place, the Reid-Thompson Public Library, and the Humboldt Regional Newcomer Centre all hosting events that were free to the public.
Jean Price with the Humboldt and District Museum and Gallery says they love putting on the two day annual event that featured music, food, crafts, and displays from many different cultures of people living in Humboldt and area.
The theme for this year’s festival was ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ and Price feels they delved deeper into the different cultures.
“With the cooking, it’s not just, ‘here, try some food,’ it’s here we’re going to talk to you about what the food means in their culture and how you go about making it.”
Recipe cards were also provided for the four different meals that were made and shared by people from Korea, Philippines, Mauritius and South Africa.
Yoonjin Park Bott is from Korea and currently living in Humboldt with her Canadian husband and their daughter. She cooked authentic Korean bibimbap for everyone to enjoy during the Learning to Cook event at the Community Gathering Place.
Colour is very important in Korean cooking with white, yellow, orange, red, and green foods all being present in a dish.
Park Bott included marinaded beef, cook spinach, raw and cooked mushrooms, zucchini, carrots, cooked egg, and rice in her bibimbap and anyone could mix together whatever they liked to create a dish they could enjoy.
Park Bott is one of just a few Koreans now living in the Humboldt area, so sharing her culture meant sharing something entirely new to people.
Especially with her daughter growing up in Canada, Park Bott feels it is very important to share her culture.
“Because we’re an interracial marriage couple, she should know both Canadian and Korean culture. It’s a really good chance to show off mommy’s culture.”
Music was also a big part of Culture Days in Humboldt with bands playing throughout the two days.
Living Word Church International (LWCI) Band lead singer, Araba Quaye, was very proud to show off the different Ghanaian and Caribbean sounds of their band at the Humboldt and District Museum. The band plays mostly church music but they did throw in some classic rock and roll.
“We just thought it would be nice to give Humboldt a different sound they could hear.”
Quaye says it is always nice for people to see what else is out there. Sometimes it is nice to get out of a certain mindset that people who may, “have no idea of what’s going outside, so just to open up people’s minds and palates and let them experience something different.”
The Human Library is the first of its kind for the Humboldt Culture Days. Humboldt Regional Newcomers Centre Executive Director, Janine Hart, says they were very proud to partner with everyone for Culture Days.
Eight “books” were available to be “borrowed” and depending on the questions asked, the conversations between the book and the borrower could be very different.
“It’s based around you can’t judge a book by its cover, whether it’s a hard book or a person and so there were some very interesting stories out there.”
The feedback from the public was great, says Hart and they learned a lot from the “books” that were available.
Price would like to thank SaskCulture who provided a grant for Humboldt’s Culture Day events, as well as the Saskatchewan Writers Guild who sponsored Mary Harelkin Bishop’s reading at the Gallery in partnership with the Reid-Thompson Library to wrap up Culture Days 2016.
