Celebration of Cultures

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This article was published 31/07/2023 (1140 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Following a three-year hiatus, the Westman Multicultural Festival finally returned to Brandon this past weekend with a large “Summer Multicultural Celebration” that took place at the Riverbank Discovery Centre grounds.

Intended as a stepping stone to help bring back the traditional winter festival early next year, Saturday’s celebration featured nine cultural groups, with representatives from the region’s Ukrainian, Salvadoran, Mexican, Jamaican, Irish, Filipino, Indian, Scottish and Métis communities.

Throughout a 12-hour period, every group got the opportunity to showcase their own cultural-infused music and dance at the Fusion Credit Union Stage, while the surrounding area played host to a variety of food vendors that sold traditional cuisine.

While the event only attracted a modest crowd in the morning, things quickly picked up in the afternoon, with hundreds of local residents eventually showing up to sample this smorgasbord of sights, sounds and smells.

Saturday’s turnout and consistently sunny weather came as a massive relief to festival secretary Gautam Srivastava, who also served as an organizing member of the Indian group.

Srivastava and his fellow organizers have been working for roughly a year to bring the Westman Multicultural Festival back from the brink, with this event last taking place in January 2020 before being sidelined by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It was like starting from scratch again,” he said. “But now that we’re into it, it’s been a lot of fun and it’s so nice to see so many vendors and performers from different countries coming together again. So I’m quite happy with the final product that we were able to put out for the summer.”

For Elisa Sapitula, head of the Brandon Filipino Community group, Saturday’s event felt like a “homecoming” of sorts for her people, who have been a part of the Westman Multicultural Festival since 2005.

Even though Westman’s Filipino population has boomed over the last two decades, especially in the Town of Neepawa, Sapitula said the pandemic put a major strain on the community due to constantly fluctuating gathering restrictions.

But with those restrictions now being a thing of the past, Sapitula said her people are reaping the cultural benefits of these full in-person events, whether that be at Saturday’s get-together or last month’s Philippines Independence Day celebration in Brandon.

“This is really important for us,” Sapitula said. “We don’t want to be detached from our culture. And we would like to pass the culture on to this young generation, especially for those who have been born and raised here in Canada.”

Also on hand for Saturday’s celebration were members of Westman Immigrant Services (WIS), who set up shop near the Fusion Credit Union Stage to conduct outreach.

Community outreach manager Hannah Holt told the Sun that she was really happy to see this event come together, especially given the sheer number of newcomers that have recently made Westman their home.

Holt said, due to the backlog brought about by the pandemic, WIS processed over 2,000 newcomers during the last fiscal year ending in March, which represents a record for the not-for-profit organization.

Because of this, Holt hopes that the Westman Multicultural Festival returns in earnest next year and features a wider scope of communities that didn’t get their moment to shine this past weekend.

“We want to help empower these smaller groups to get their chance to showcase their culture, because everyone’s culture is amazing and incredible and it would be nice to see everyone getting represented,” she said.

The Westman Multicultural Festival first began in 2004. Then mayor Dave Burgess and his administration put together what was originally known as the “Lieutenant Governor’s Winter Festival” to help celebrate Brandon’s growing cultural diversity and give the broader community something to do during an “off” period of the year.

Burgess, now a Realtor for Royal LePage, returned to spearhead the revival of the event as its chair, hoping that this Summer Multicultural Celebration would generate enough momentum to help usher in the return of the more traditional multi-day festival next February.

Talking to the Sun on Saturday, Burgess believes that the large turnout, good weather and positive feedback for this new event is a good omen for the future of the Westman Multicultural Festival.

He’s also open to the possibility of making this new summer celebration a permanent fixture, especially since attendees told him that they enjoyed visiting these groups all in one spot, as opposed to scattering pavilions throughout the city like they’ve done in the past multicultural festivals.

“So whatever they want to do I’ll be happy to be involved,” Burgess said.

The official return of the Westman Multicultural Festival is scheduled to take place Feb. 8-10, 2024. For more information on this event as it develops, visit gotothepavilions.com.

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @KyleDarbyson