Sometimes our Canadian multiculturalism goes a little too far, even for a Chinese Canadian like myself. Here in Toronto, Canada and especially in Scarborough, my area of the world is biased towards Chinese, especially from the Mainland. Nofrills, a local big box grocer, decides to put Billy Bee Honey, 1 litre bottle on sale for $6.88CAD. This is high quality Canadian honey, which I have used for many years without issue. At the store I pick up four bottles and head to the cash, only to find that those I picked up are not the ones advertised on sale. The difference between the two: the advertised honey has an English-Chinese label and the one I picked up has an English only label. It was annoying to have to drop my bottles of honey at the cash, reenter the store and purchase what Nofrills calls “ethnic” Billy Bee honey. I am all for ethnic but please do not discriminate against English only labels and products. Nofrills, intended or not, you need a smack upside the head.
Billy Bee Honey: Bottle on the right called ethnic is on sale, the one on the left is not
Yangrou chuanr, mutton kebobs, Chinese street meat
It takes very little for me to have flashbacks of eating street meat in places I’ve lived or visited, namely China, HK and Japan. The mere whiff of an exotic spice can easily send me off to places past, transforming me from here to where I’ve been. I literally lose track of what I am doing and will walk off to chase a scent down. Now that I live in Toronto, Canada, where multiculturalism has evolved to mind expanding lengths, I become easily impatient with our city politicians as they dither about what is acceptable street food offerings to Torontonians. Here’s a novel idea: Let anyone offer food on the street and let the general public decide what they want to eat. Make it easy to get a licenses, enforce strict health rules, and punish those that are unclean. That, however, would be too easy.