Celebrating Diversity Archives | Creating Together Parkdale

Welcoming Spring’s Rebirth

March 23, 2021 by Melanie

March 21st marks the first day of spring! And with this, families are starting to prepare for the traditional celebration of Easter. However, normally it is a time of opening our doors, reuniting with family members, enjoying community egg hunts, decorating eggs, and for many, a time of sacred prayer and family reflection. With COVID-19 still a very present reality, many of us are looking for creative ways to celebrate the holiday amidst social distancing protocols. Here at Creating Together, we cannot emphasize enough the value and role of traditions in increasing happiness, emotional wellness, and positive self-identity in children.

So – regardless of COVID-19, the themes of renewal, rebirth, and resilience remain. And it becomes more important than ever to uphold the family traditions you hold most dear. From one point of view, we could see this holiday as perfectly timed, to remind us all of the importance of these values and themes in our homes, our families, and our communities. Consider the values that are important to your family at this time of year, and try to find some ways to weave these into teachings for your family. Traditions of Gratitude, for example, fit in beautifully with this time of year.

And don’t forget to have some fun together! According to FamilyEducation.com the top 10 Easter activities for families include:

Egg and Spoon Race.
Jelly Bean Guessing Games.
Read Easter and Spring Children’s Books.
Plant Flowers.
Decorate an Easter Egg Tree.
Make Chocolate Fondue.
Create Easter Crafts.
Give a Gift Basket.

Described in further detail here, you could try a variation of many of these activities in the comfort of your home or yard. Women’s Day also describes some fun Easter activities you can enjoy while practicing social distancing.

At Creating Together, we are getting ready to set you up with some really great crafts, stories, and songs to help you and your little ones celebrate. Check out our virtual program schedule, and join us the week of March 29th-April 2nd!

Certainly during this time of unprecedented unrest and upheaval to the daily routine, holding true to traditions becomes a lifeline that all of our children need now more than ever. Never underestimate the power of tradition. We hope you’ll join us!

Finding Creative Ways to Celebrate Diwali

November 13, 2020 by Melanie

Diwali, also known as the Festival of Lights, begins Saturday November 13th and is celebrated by Hindus and other faiths for typically five days. With over 2000 people identifying as Hindu in the Parkdale-High Park area alone, our local Diwali celebrations fostered a sense of home and community for those who observe the holiday, while increasing awareness, understanding, and compassion among children, parents and caregivers who observe other holidays.

Public health officials across the country are urging people to stay home and celebrate Diwali exclusively with members of their family household to limit the spread of COVID-19. So while we all work on protecting our most vulnerable, we need to find new ways to celebrate a festival that is spent traditionally in the embrace of family and friends.

At Creating Together, we celebrated with a live Diwali themed story-time, and incredible Diwali crafts to help you celebrate with your little ones at home, between zoom calls with family members 🙂

We hope you will enjoy the recordings and take some time to foster a sense of home and community for you and your family, especially during these challenging times.

Orange Shirt Day: Because Every Child Matters

September 26, 2020 by Melanie

September 30th is Orange Shirt Day, “a day when we honour the Indigenous children who were sent away to residential schools in Canada and learn more about the history of those schools”. (CBC.ca).

Between the 1860s and 1990s, approximately 150,000 Métis, Inuit and First Nations children were sent to church-run residential schools. The schools harmed Indigenous children by removing them from their families, forcing them to speak English or French instead of their ancestral languages, disconnecting them from their culture and traditions and forcing them to adopt Christianity in order to assimilate into Canadian society. The government has since acknowledged that this approach was wrong, cruel and ineffective, and offered an official apology to the Indigenous people of Canada in 2008.

Why an Orange Shirt?

The legacy of Residential Schools is still felt by survivors (former students), their families and communities, and on September 30th, the time when children were taken to these schools. But why an orange shirt?

The “orange shirt” in Orange Shirt Day refers to the new shirt that Phyllis Webstad was given to her by her grandmother for her first day of school at St. Joseph’s Mission residential school in British Columbia. When Phyllis got to school, they took away her clothes, including her new shirt. It was never returned. To Phyllis, the colour orange has always reminded her of her experiences at residential school and, as she has said, “how my feelings didn’t matter, how no one cared and I felt like I was worth nothing. All of us little children were crying and no one cared.” The message that Phyllis wants to pass along on Orange Shirt Day — and every day — is that every child matters. Orange Shirt Day was started by Phyllis to educate people about residential schools and fight racism and bullying.

What You Can Do

Share Phyllis’ story. You can watch it on YouTube or below:

2. Continue learning about what happened to Indigenous Peoples. Take a look at Phyliss’ book “The Orange Shirt Story“, written for younger people, and these 12 books, recommended for adults by CBC.

3. Join over 10,000 teachers and over 500,000 of Canadian youth on September 30 to honour Residential School Survivors, their families and communities at an extraordinary virtual event to support and encourage meaningful Reconciliation across Canada. For Grades 5 through 12: https://education.nctr.ca/

4. Wear your orange shirt on September 30th – not only because of the pain and tragedy that was caused, but to recognize the strength, resilience and healing of the indigenous peoples and our commitment to creating a better future, where every child matters.

Black History Month 2020: Going Forward, Guided by Our Past

February 4, 2020 by Melanie

Across the country, February is the month that Canadians honour and celebrate the legacy of Black Canadians, with Black History Month.

Join us as we celebrate, for a special snack on Friday the 21st!

This Year’s Theme

With a different theme selected each year, the theme of the Government of Canada’s Black History Month campaign is “Canadians of African Descent: Going forward, guided by the past”. Feet forward, head turned backward, the Sankofa bird reflects on the past to build a successful future.

Rita Cox Collection, Parkdale Public Library

Resources to Learn and Share

This gives all of us an invitation to learn ore about our history, so we can move forward knowing from whence we came. Here in our own community, we are fortunate to hold the Rita Cox Black and Caribbean Heritage Collection at the Parkdale Public Library. This collection is recognized as one of the most significant Black and Caribbean heritage collections in Canada. The collection features over 16,000 print and audiovisual materials for adults, children, and teens about the Black and Caribbean historical and cultural experience. So in the spirit of literacy and connecting with your community, go and check out this incredible collection this month with your family!

Lunar New Year Celebration

January 22, 2020 by Melanie

The Lunar New Year, Chinese Chunjie, Vietnamese Tet, Korean Solnal, Tibetan Losar, also called Spring Festival, is celebrated during the second new moon after the winter solstice, usually between January 21 and February 20 on the Gregorian calendar.

The festival is typically celebrated in Asian countries, beginning with the first new moon of the year and ending on the first full moon of the lunar calendar, 15 days later.

Chinese New Year, January 25th

This year’s Chinese New Year begins January 25th, as we move into the Year of the Rat. Here are a few rituals that are traditionally done to celebrate the Chinese New Year:

Visit family and friends – This tradition is so crucial that LNY travel is annually heralded as the ‘world’s largest human migration’. In 2019, 3 billion trips were projected to be made during the holiday season.

Share wealth with family – Red packets carrying cash gifts are given to friends and family. It is also tradition for children to give a gift to their grandparents / elders.

Clear out last year’s clutter – In the days leading up to the Lunar New Year, the last year is washed away: windows, walls and furniture are all cleaned and dusted. However, all cleaning stops on the first day of the Lunar New Year, so good fortune is not swept away.

Hang red decorations – it is said, according to lunar new year mythology, that red is hung to ward off Nian – a lion-like monster that is afraid of the colour red.

Watch a traditional dance – Further to the red decorations, Nian also doesn’t like loud noises, so drums and cymbals accompany a flying lion dance outdoors.

You won’t want to miss the festivities in Chinatown this Saturday from 12-5pm: https://www.chinatownbia.com/eventsnews/lny2020/

Come and Celebrate with Us!

We hope you’ll join us this Friday at Creating Together to celebrate with some food and origami mouse activities! Take a look below for a tutorial on how to do this at home!

Happy New Year!

Next month, we’ll be celebrating Tibetan Losar as well, which fall this year on February 24-26. Stay tuned for more information on that!

Welcoming Spring’s Rebirth

Finding Creative Ways to Celebrate Diwali

Orange Shirt Day: Because Every Child Matters

Why an Orange Shirt?

What You Can Do

Black History Month 2020: Going Forward, Guided by Our Past

This Year’s Theme

Resources to Learn and Share

Lunar New Year Celebration

Chinese New Year, January 25th

Come and Celebrate with Us!

Happy New Year!

Creating Together Parkdale Family Resource Centre

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