ATHABASCA - Local foodies will get a chance to sample a variety of cuisine Nov. 4 when the Alice B. Donahue brings back a mouth-watering community favourite.
The Taste of Athabasca will be an opportunity for locals to showcase their culture through food, as part of the library’s One Book, One Community campaign — after a committee chose Homes by Abu Bakr al Rabeeah.
Winnie Yeung, program coordinator Cheryl Andrews said they wanted to celebrate the diverse cultures in the community. The event will run from 11:00 – 1:00 in the Athabasca Regional Multiplex’s fieldhouse.
“The book is about a refugee family coming to Canada, and we were hoping that it would be a way that we could bring people together to share in the community and open lines of communication,” said Andrews. “We have 25 different people bringing food with a wide range of flavours and tastes and heritage.”
The library ran three events for this year’s campaign — Yeung hosted an author chat on Oct. 21, and the library screened Peace by Chocolate, a film about a Syrian family who settled in Antigonish, NS.
“It’s going to be a free event, so anyone and everyone is welcome, although we are accepting donations,” said Andrews. “Every culture is proud of their food, and a lot of people love learning about culture through unique flavours. It’s a way to bring people together to share in that.”
It’s the first time the library has held the event, although it used to be a community favourite — Andrews wasn’t sure how long ago it stopped, but she encouraged anyone who wanted to keep it going after this year to get involved.
“It’s been organized by a number of different involved community members, but it fell (by the wayside) and it wasn’t happening anymore. This is going to be a one-off, but if people want to continue it after that would be awesome,” said Andrews.
One Book, One Community is a program the library uses to connect the community through literacy — the committee picks books it feels are broadly applicable in the community, and the library acts as a host for discussions and learning opportunities around each year’s selection. This year, roughly 70 people have taken part, and the campaign drew in approximately 140 people in 2021 and 2022.
“We’re looking for different topics each year. Our first year we picked a dystopian novel with an environmental theme (Watershed by Doreen Vanderstoop) and then the next year we found a beautiful book (The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour by Dawn Dumont),” said Andrews. “This year the topic came up that we have a lot of newcomers in our community, so how do we open up these topics of conversation, and maybe open up a space for people to see challenges that people may face as they’re leaving a war situation.”
While Homes is about an Iraqi family that fled Syria during the early turmoil of the civil war —the book is fiction but it’s based on the experiences of a real family — its lessons and themes found a new light during the current Russia/Ukraine war.
“It’s a very hopeful story, you hear these topics about war but it’s through a child’s eyes,” said Andrews. “A number of people have related it to the Ukrainian community that has come to Athabasca, and we also have Syrian immigrants in the community. There are students I teach from the Congo that are fleeing war, so it relates to many members of our community.”
Homes is being used in other parts of the province as an educational tool for teachers to help understand the struggles that some of their students face as they settle in a new country, which Andrews said has lent a more practical lens to discussions.
“It shows how this book can be used to make a real difference to people, and that’s obviously a big lofty goal, but we can learn a lot from literature, and having these conversations about how it made us feel and what it made us think.”
