Taking A Journey Across Cultures

I’m not saying that Spokane isn’t a swingin’ cosmopolitan global center. After all, we have numerous international dining establishments, some of which offer the “Big Juan” for 99 cents.

However, my wife Carol and I have just returned from four days in Vancouver, B.C., a city so cosmopolitan that we feel like we have practically circled the globe, and all we did was drive 30 miles across the Canadian border. Sure, we spent a lot of money, mostly on restaurants, but we saved all of the money we might have spent on tickets to London, Paris, Hong Kong, Singapore, Macedonia or Bombay. We experienced all of those cultures right in Vancouver, sometimes on the same day, which makes “Around the World in 80 Days” seem like a donkey ride.

The first culture we experienced was the British, since Canada has been part of the British Empire for more than two centuries. This explains why Stanley Park has a cricket pitch, in which crickets are not actually pitched (that would be cruelty to invertebrates) but on which cricket is actually played.

The British influence also accounts for the existence of the Dover Arms Pub, where we observed numerous ale-drinking denizens riveted by the Newcastle vs. Leeds soccer match, live via feed from England. The British can also be credited, or blamed, for the fact that we found ourselves one night eating a meat pie, something which only the British would consider fine cuisine. The British influence also accounts for the fact that, as I sit at my Spokane desk writing this story, I am sipping Royal Jubilee tea, direct from Murchies Tea, Ltd., instead of some American drink such as Maxwell House. Apparently, it took me only four days to “go native.”

French was the second culture we experienced, largely via the fact that people were speaking French all over the place, since Canada remains bilingual. British Columbia is no Quebec, but still, the province is jammed with French tourists, or maybe Quebecois tourists, or maybe just British Columbians who prefer to speak French. We also observed plenty of Francais at the Cafe de Paris, an elegant little bistro in which you could sip fine French wines, indulge in rich French sauces, and tear into a cute little French bunny rabbit, which is what a “lapin” turns out to mean.

The Hong Kong influence is even stronger, and we were nearly overwhelmed by it during a sensory-overload stroll through Vancouver’s Chinatown. This is no Chinese theme park for tourists - this is a true Chinatown, filled with Chinese-speaking housewives shopping for the day’s dinner.

The sight of all of those roasted ducks and dried octopi made us hungry, so we stopped in at a dim sum restaurant in the heart of Chinatown. Rarely in Spokane can we fully immerse ourselves in a foreign culture, except perhaps the exotic “South Hill charity auction” culture, but we certainly landed in one here. Everyone was speaking Chinese, and everyone seemed to know what they were doing. They were selecting dishes from the carts rolling past, so we did the same thing. We just pointed at a few dishes and started eating. All were delicious, including the one that was, and I hope I misunderstood the waitress here, “beef stomach.”

The entire Indian subcontinent and surrounding areas such as Malaysia and Singapore are also well-represented in Vancouver, again because of the liberal immigration laws within the Commonwealth Formerly Known As British. The Southern Asia influence was perhaps most evident in the fact that, on the day we arrived, Ujjal Dosanjh, a man born in the Punjab, was elected British Columbia’s premier. Even the Bloedel Conservatory, a massive domed greenhouse in Queen Elizabeth Park, showed an Asian face. It is filled with tropical jungle plants from all over Asia (and Africa and South America) as well as dozens of tropical birds, including Charlie the Moluccan Cockatoo.

Then one night we found ourselves in Salonika, a city in the Macedonian region of northern Greece. Actually, we were in Salonika the restaurant, which resembled a Greek courtyard and where we feasted on Greek wine and marinated, charbroiled whole squids (don’t laugh - they’re superior to British meat pie).

And finally, fittingly, we spent our last night soaking up true Canadian culture. No, I don’t mean the culture of back-bacon and Molson. I mean the culture of the Native tribes, at a restaurant called the Liliget Feast House. This is Vancouver’s only Native restaurant, and the interior resembles a longhouse, although one created by an interior designer. We ate aldergrilled salmon, mussels, oysters, prawns and halibut as well as steamed fiddlehead ferns, sea asparagus, and a dried smoked pencil-thin fish called an oolican (don’t laugh - it’s superior to back-bacon).

This feast was a welcome reminder that, despite all of its cosmopolitan diversity, Vancouver is at the edge of a vast wilderness with its own exceptional bounty.

It was also a reminder that, in our desire to experience the world’s cultures, we shouldn’t ignore the ones right here close to home. I think I’ll run out and experience a South Hill charity auction.