TD Festival of South Asia, 2022

 The TD Festival of South Asia is a free street festival in Gerrard India Bazaar celebrating South Asian (OK mostly Indian) culture, food, entertainment and heritage.

They close off Gerrard street for the Indian section, and even the streetcars are rerouted. It is more or less an excuse for many of the businesses here to display their wares in the street. Gerrard street (the India Bazaar section) was known back in the day (late 90s, early 2000s) as the South Asian place in Toronto. That distinction, of course, has been lost over the decades as the South Asian diaspora spread far and wide, and now no one really needs to go Gerrard any more for their desi stuff.

The food choices were many. There were multiple stalls selling appetizers such as samosas or cane juice or mango lassi, as well as regulars such as chaat, bhelpuri and so on. The line ups weren't that long in the afternoon, and the prices reasonable.

The eastern section of the plaza contained more diverse choices such as street BBQ-ed tandoori chicken (check out the red colour!) as well as cholay batoore and others.

Of course it cannot be a festival without performances, and to their credit, the organizers had some set of dancers or performers every so often. And they were not just Indian - I saw Nepalese, Bengali amongst others. So at least in that aspect, it covered the whole South Asian flavour. 

I heard there was another festival in Mississauga, which is rapidly becoming another South Asian centre, along with Brampton. However with it comes to Gerrard, it is the OG, and many of us have fond memories of our early days in Canada coming down here to get a taste of South Asia in Toronto.

The weather was clear and sunny, and not too hot, which was perfect. You could walk around, see the whole set of bazaars and stalls, while getting tasty bites to eat.

As for parking, you have to park on the surrounding streets. On some of them you can only park on one side of the street (depending on the date) and there are also time restrictions (you can only park for an hour), so do pay attention. I wish there was a Green P location nearby that was easily accessible. However, it was a fun festival to attend.

Taste of the Middle East, Toronto, 2022

The Taste of the Middle East is a festival that celebrates Arabic music, culture, food, arts and heritage. 

This year the festival was held downtown Toronto, at Nathan Phillips Square.

It was a brilliant sunny day. I visited on Friday, the first day of the festival. It runs Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Apparently there are bigger things planned on Sunday.

Along with the sponsor tents, there were lots of other tents of various merchants. Here is Huda, a religious organization, right next to the telecommunications giant Telus.

In the picture above, City Hall is to the background. Nathan Phillips Square has the advantage of having a huge Green P parking lot right underneath. I got in around 7 pm and got parking easily. It only cost $6.

Lots and lots of stalls, and lots and lots of people. It was great to see the huge diversity that makes Toronto one of the best cities in the world to live in. Everyone came to experience Arabic culture, not just Arabs (or Muslims).

People also have the misconception that Arabic culture is just limited to Muslims and Islam, which is not true. There's a lot of Christians in the Arab world. Some of the Arab world also have other cultures that are non Arab, for example Berbers.

As the evening went on, it became busier and busier, as more people started to drop by. The stage also started to have some shows and performances.

The one complaint I would have is that the food selection was not that big, and as expected from a festival - it was expensive. A pineapple juice drink was $13. A pastry was $8. Osmows shawarma platter was $13. I guess inflation hits everyone.

It's a great festival, particularly the musical big names at the end of the night. If you are in Toronto, it's definitely worth checking out, especially when parking is not a problem.

East Coast: Halifax (Days 10 and 11) and the Return (Days 12 and 13)

Continued from Day 9

Note: This post was slated to be published last year (yes, last year!). For whatever reason, it was missed. Now, as we are stuck in our homes during the Covid19 pandemic, I was reminiscing about a fantastic trip to Canada's East Coast last year, and realized I hadn't posted about Halifax.

Halifax is home to Dalhousie University. It is a small campus, very beautiful, neat and tidy. For some reason, when I visit cities, I like to visit their famous university campuses. Dalhousie is also one of the first universities in Canada I had applied to, and got admitted to, though I never attended as I eventually chose University of Toronto. So, in a way, it was seeing a "what-if-alternate-situation" scenario!

Halifax and Dartmouth are twice cities, separated by a body of water that empties into the Atlantic Ocean. The Halifax Harbourfront is a great place to sit and relax, and watch the big ships come and go.

Tired of seafood all through the trip? Well, we weren't, but when we discovered this fantastic Turkish halal eatery, why not get some meat? :-)

The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic is a must-see attraction when you are in Halifax, primarily because it houses some relics from the most famous sunken ship of all - the Titanic. This museum is the oldest and largest maritime museum in Canada with a collection of over 30,000 artifacts.

A special permanent exhibit explores the sinking of the Titanic with an emphasis on Nova Scotia's connection to recovering the bodies of Titanic victims.

The museum has the world's foremost collection of wooden artifacts from Titanic, including one of the few surviving deck chairs.

In the exhibition on the Halifax Explosion, there were fully detailed models on how the city looked a hundred years ago.

Citadel Hill (Fort George), also known as the Halifax Citadel, is another National Historic Site and you can enter with your national park pass. It offers good viewpoints to look at the city.

Halifax was a lovely city, full of greenery and parks. I don't know how it was in winter, but it is lovely during a hot summer's day.

Theodore Tugboat is a Canadian children's television series about a tugboat named Theodore who lives in the Big Harbour with all of his friends. Now, when you visit the harbourfront you can see "Theodore" still sailing there.

The last night on our East Coast trip (before we start to head back), we once again tried some halal Turkish.

The Long Return

It was now time to return home. The long drive would take two days. On the first day, we would have to make the big journey to Quebec City.

Fuel up before the drive

Crossing into New Brunswick

Irving gas stations - this was a common sight in the East Coast

Leaving Quebec City early the next morning

Finally, after so many days, you see on the sign "Toronto"

About to enter into Ontario

Finally, after 14 days, we were home! 5,731 km , lots of great seafood, adventures, memories - this was one epic road trip.

How Taiwan Conquered the Coronavirus with Common Sense

This is Ms. Tsai Ing-Wen. She is the first female President of Taiwan. She also leads the country with the best response to COVID-19.

Let's look at some of her stats and then her steps.

Stats:

• Taiwan is geographically right next to China, and had daily flights to Wuhan, the epicentre of the virus.
• When the epidemic began, John Hopkins university predicted Taiwan would be the second hardest hit country.
• Right now, they have a population of 23 million, out of which only 427 are affected, and 6 deaths. For comparison, Canada has 37 million people, more than 40,000 cases and over 2000 dead. Not to mention, Taiwan's 23 million live in an area smaller than Nova Scotia.

Now let's see how they handled their epidemic.

Short summary: Masks, hand wash, travel ban, aggressive tracking and quarantine. Also, ignore the WHO.

Result: Everything is open, economy hasn't crashed, curve is basically flat.

Details:

• early action (from January 1, 2020). Starts to board flights from China and check passengers for symptoms.
• Travel ban from ALL flights from Wuhan, and then China, shortly after.
• Put a triage centre in airport to identify possible cases
• Strict quarantine: you get paid for staying in quarantine, get food delivered to your house, get your symptoms checked thrice a day. Break quarantine and you are fined several month's salary. They would do this for all POSSIBLE cases, not just positive cases.
• Aggressive hand washing - every public building had sanitizing stations, and you get your temperature checked before you enter. You are not allowed to enter a building if you show symptoms.
• Masks - Everyone MUST wear masks when out. Taiwan saw they have 40 million masks in their stockpile, so they cranked up production to 10 million masks PER DAY and put a price limit on the masks to prevent price gouging.
• They integrated travel, immigration, customs and health care databases and included cellphone tracking to identify possible cases and improve contact tracing.
• QUARANTINE the sick, not the healthy - was their motto.

Today, Taiwan is a classic example of using common sense and the old age methods with new technology to control an epidemic. They went hard, they went aggressive - AND THEY WENT EARLY. Today their parks, restaurants, schools, offices, public services are all open, and yet their numbers are low.

Compare this to Canada where we had no travel restrictions, no forced home quarantine, no database integration, no masks (STILL NO INSTRUCTION ON MASKS), no aggressive stockpiling of PPEs, no protection from PRICE GOUGING or PANIC BUYING, no hand washing in public buildings, NO AIRPORT measures ... the list goes on.

Sources:

https://www.thestar.com/podcasts/thismatters/2020/04/22/23-million-people-6-deaths-how-taiwan-tackled-the-covid-19-crisis.html

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/04/asia/taiwan-coronavirus-response-who-intl-hnk/index.html

A Tale of 3 Women: Jacinda Ardern, Dr. Henry and Dr. Tam

Let's talk about three women.

Two of them are smart. The third one - Let's say I am not a fan.

1. Jacinda Ardern

They say a leader is tested in a crisis, and how you deal with it makes or breaks you. By that definition, Ms. Ardern should be the leader of the world. Her first crisis was last year during the horrific mosque shooting in Christchurch. The whole world saw how she dealt with the fall out, with empathy, determination, unity and determination. Now let's see how she dealt with the corona virus:

• COVID-19 testing is widespread
• Out of 5 million, only 12 people died
• Banned travellers from China in early February, before a single case in NZ
• Banned foreigners from NZ in mid-March, with only a handful of cases
• National lockdown from early March, much earlier then other Western nations
• Unveiled a four level alert system
• With a degree in communications, kept her citizens abreast of events, and used empathy in her Facebook live sessions
• Inspired a collective effort from all NZ, public health departments and hospitals.

Though it's early to say, by all counts, her efforts seem to be working.

2. Dr. Bonnie Henry 

She is the Provincial Health Officer for British Columbia, and the first province to see a spike in the number of growths of COVID-19 positive cases. Yet, as of now, whether you go by confirmed cases or hospitalizations, by raw numbers or a per capita comparison, the virus has steadily grown in Ontario and Quebec, but flattened in BC. Why? It is her leadership, as well as luck and timing.

• She looked at the data from Quebec's March break and correctly deduced it's mostly community transmission from USA. This was at a time when Dr. Theresa Tam was saying the "risk is low".
• She immediately asked BC citizens to STOP ALL TRAVEL outside of Canada. This was on March 11, the same day Doug Ford of Ontario was telling people to travel on March break and "have a good time".
• She immediately put a halt to health workers working in more than one place. This immediately broke the back of community transmission. As a comparison, Ontario did this only last week (4 weeks later).
• Improved testing per capital (Ontario is still behind its goals), reserve stock piling of PPE and focus on social distancing.
• Unified messaging and response to the public, and a better health care system than other provinces.
• She saw the data and introduced corrective BOLD measures in BC much before the rest of Canada caught on.
• Dr. Henry's direct experience in overseeing Toronto's SARS and Canada's H1N1 outbreaks is the type of background that's impossible to quantify in a situation like this.

3. Dr. Theresa Tam

Now let us quantify the "contributions" of Canada's top doctor.

• On Dec 31, 2019, Taiwan warned WHO about the virus spreading from human to human. WHO rejected the idea. Guess who sits on the oversight committee of WHO? That's right, Dr. Tam. This is the committee that is there to make sure WHO does the right thing, and NOT bow to pressure from China. 
• On Jan 14, 2020, WHO tweeted the virus was NOT transmitting from human to human. This, despite doctors treating patients in China getting sick. Dr. Tam did not stop them, but actually repeated that rubbish, despite warnings from Taiwan and Singapore.
• Jan 20, China finally admitted the virus was transmitting from human to human. Dr Tam insisted there was no risk to Canadians. Flights continued from China.
• Jan 25, first Canadian case, a man who returned from Wuhan.
• Jan 26, second Canadian case, that man's wife. Dr. Tam insisted risk is "low".
• Jan 27. Dr Tam chastised those worrying about the virus as "racism".
• Jan 31, Trump acted on his "China ban". Meanwhile Dr Tam continued to insist there is no risk, and travellers continued to come here from China. Canada's numbers showed a steady rise.
• Feb 19 to March 4 - As Iran became the new hotspot, Dr. Tam continued to resist calls for travel bans. By this time, Singapore, New Zealand, Vietnam, Taiwan, USA, Italy had all acted on travel restrictions, but not her. Canada's numbers now began to rise sharply as returnees from Iran began to show signs of infection. 
• By March 4, returnees from USA were showing signs of infection. One of them rode the TTC and Go before testing positive. Dr. Tam insisted the "risk is low". She also said travel bans were of no use. She also said don't wear masks.
• March 12 - Mrs. Trudeau tested positive, and all hell broke loose.
• March 30, the CDC says you should wear masks. Dr. Tam still denies it's of any use.

This is why Dr. Theresa Tam needs to be fired.