A cultural taste

A member of a Japanese dance group says the Multicultural Association Folklore Festival ensures that they have a chance to share their traditions with the broader community.

Hundreds of participants headed into the Fort William Gardens for the final day of the Folklore Festival on Sunday. The festival, which started on Saturday, featured a variety of foods and performances from different cultural backgrounds.

Kristi Judge, 33, a member of the Lakehead Japanese Cultural Association FUJI Dancers, prepared to go on stage and wore a traditional cotton kimono.

Judge learned how to dance from her Grandma, Barbara Oshimo about 10 years ago after she left Toronto and came back to Thunder Bay. She described her dance as traditional with a slow, graceful pace.

She said her group usually practices an hour and a half once a week for nine months out of the year with the Folklore Festival as the main performance for the group.

But the most important part of the dance for her is connecting to her culture, she said.

"It’s my heritage," Judge said. "(The Folklore Festival) is pretty much what we practice for. Without this (festival) we would be pretty much just be performing for our own community. Without this, nobody else would see it or they would just see it in movies. People wouldn’t even know we do this."

Since her Grandma has retired from dancing, she said it is up to her and the rest of the group members to pass on what they have learned to the next generation.

Most residents who attended the festival agreed that the two biggest attractions were the performances and the food.

Ben Orban and his wife, Linda sampled a few of the culinary delights at the festival. Orban finished a baklava, a Greek dessert made with filo pastry filled with chopped nuts and sweetened with either syrup or honey.

He said the food was the main attraction for him.

"I haven’t been here before but I wanted to see what it was all about," Orban said.

Roberta Lane and her 10-year-old-granddaughter Sarah Bilokryli wanted to learn more about the various cultures that were at the festival. What attracted Lane to the festival was seeing all the different performances and the different foods, she said.

"Thunder Bay has so many different nationalities now that I think it is very important that we know of each other and learn the culture and share," Lane said. "I love learning about things about stuff that I don’t know about. This brings everyone together."

The festival wraps up on Sunday at 7 p.m.