OUT and ABOUT with Seeker Chick Mai-Liis: Celebrating at the Tamil Heritage Festival

As I always say, everything happens for a reason and what began as a snow stormy day on Sunday, February 18th, turned into a beautiful music and inspiration filled afternoon in the Auditorium at CCVS in Cornwall.

So what led up to this? Well, we woke up with quite a lot of snow on the ground where we live out around Martintown and everyone on Facebook talking about cars in the ditch and saying if you don’t have to go out today it’s best to stay off the roads. I don’t usually go by these messages and I don’t always trust the Weather Forecast as a lot of times it changes, but we were originally heading to Brockville and decided not to. However I had an invitation to the Tamil Heritage Festival in Cornwall and really wanted to attend so early afternoon I went out to clean off my car and while it was running, I left the door a little open so that the doors wouldn’t lock but unfortunately a large gust of wind came up out of nowhere and guess what, it blew the car door almost shut and locked all four car doors and the hatchback. No problem I thought, I’ll just get Sheldon to unlock the door with his key and then I can leave. Not that easy …as we are still in the process of unpacking, the second key to my car is still in a box somewhere, but where, we have no idea. This was not good so we ended up trying to unlock my car the old fashioned “coat-hanger way”.

Of course that took quite a while, so close and yet so far so many times that I felt, ok this day has been jinxed and I am not going anywhere. Finally though we were able to press on the unlock button and I was on my way, yes through numerous snow drifts on the road, but arrived in Cornwall safely.

As I said, I was happy that I had gone against my gut instinct as the weather outside was snowy and cold but inside it was totally the opposite. The Tamil Heritage Festival was full of people dancing, singing, practicing, reciting poetry all promoting the unity of Tamils across the province during this traditional time of celebration.

This Festival showcased cultural performances of song and dance with entertainers from Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal as well as over 100 Cornwall school children. A key part of the festival was the presentation of awards for student competitions in art and public speaking on the topics of Tamil art, culture, history and language. I was especially interested in these instruments and was anxious to hear them being played. The sound was like a deep guitar / harp sound and the instrument is called a Veena.

The theme for this year’s festival was Food with lots of authentic Tamil delicacies for everyone to try.

My heritage is Estonian and I have always loved the fact that I speak fluent Estonian and can read, write and understand the language so I was very happy to see so many young people dressed in their cultures attire and speaking in their language. It is so important to keep our languages alive and Cornwall is becoming a very diverse cultural community which is wonderful to see. One thing I noticed though and found interesting was the mix of cultural attire and running shoes, an interesting combination!

I also loved the idea of the large screen behind the performers so no matter where you were in the auditorium you could see what was going on on the stage and also the fact that introductions and some of the speeches were done in Tamil and English was wonderful.

I was especially impressed by the young female Doctor who spoke of her years studying at CCVS and the encouragement she received as a female to study hard, get a career and have her independence as a woman. Such great motivation for the younger people in the room.

I was so happy that I made it to this event and am looking forward to attending many more such events to commemorate people in our diverse community.