6 Fun Things To Do During Asian Heritage month in Toronto

May is Asian Heritage month, a time to celebrate and experience Asian culture in our society! With so much going on around the city, we’ve come up with a list of fun and interesting things to during Asian Heritage month in Toronto:

1. Try a new kind a cuisine

Whether you already love Asian food or you’re looking to try something new, use Asian Heritage month as your excuse to venture around town for a seriously tasty meal. Check out some restaurants in Koreatown, Chinatown, and Little India!

2. Snap a picture of the cherry blossoms at High Park

Each year thousands of people visit High Park to take part in the century old Japanese tradition of Sakura Hanami, or “cherry blossom flower viewing.” Most of the cherry blossoms are located in an area called Hillside, along the west area of the park beside Grenadier Pond.

3. Soak in Asian heritage art and a photo exhibition at City Hall

The theme for the exhibit this year is Canada’s multiculturalism and peace. During the festival weekend, the artists and photographers will be present to talk about Asian art media and demonstrate their techniques; these educational activities aim at helping the public to develop necessary knowledge and critical skills to appreciate Asian art. Best of all, it’s free!

4. Take an Asian inspired class at a Toronto Library

Libraries around the city are hosting Asian inspired classes, from learning Chinese calligraphy, folding origami, or rolling your own sushi- there’s something for everyone!

5. Enjoy a walking tour of Toronto’s Asian communities

Heritage Toronto will be hosting walking tours all month of Chinatown, Koreatown, the Gerrad India bazaar, and St. James Town and the Filipino community!

6. Read a book 

Take a walk through someone else’s shoes with the power of fiction. Read about an experience that is wholly different from your own.   Our recommendations are Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety by Ann Y.K. Choi, The Incarnations by Susan Barker, and Before We Visit the Goddess by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.

Friday Round-Up

We know it can be hard to sift through all of the amazing news during the week, which is why we’ve rounded up our fav highlights!

The facts are in: Deskbound by Kelly Starrett is a Globe and Mail bestseller. Clearly the public is very concerned about the negative health effects of sitting for prolonged periods of time. Yay for health!

Shoe Dog author and Nike Creator Phil Knight Gifts Stephen Colbert with a pair of custom Nike Air Prestos.

Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety, a portrayal of the life of a young Korean Canadian girl who will not give up on her dreams or her family, came out this week! You can enter for a chance to win a copy on She Does the City.

Bryan Cranston revealed the cover of his upcoming memoir, A Life in Parts. We’re obsessed. 

And the best news of all: Unflinching author Jody Mitic hung out with Prince Harry at the Invictus Games countdown launch in Toronto!

Have a nice weekend, everybody! :)

We have a special guest post from author Ann Y.K. Choi today as part of our week-long blog tour for the release Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety.

Follow the rest of the tour here: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5

Yu-Rhee Versus Mary: Does the Name Matter? by Ann Y.K. Choi

As a seven-year-old child, I had no idea what it meant to lose my name. Because it was happening to every Asian immigrant I knew, I didn’t think much about it. It wasn’t until decades later when I was pregnant and happily pondering names for my baby that I began to consider how my mother must have felt when she was told that the names she had carefully selected for her children had to be sacrificed.

In Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety, my protagonist, Mary, reveals how important her mother once regarded her children’s Korean names. “Your reputation will one day be built on it,” she tells her daughter. However, when Mary and her brother Josh register at a Canadian school for the first time in the mid-seventies, they are forced to accept new “Canadian” names. They are told they have no choice; it was the school board’s policy, at that time, to “help the children fit in.”

A decade later, after Mary is viciously attacked and is feeling very vulnerable, she reflects upon the implications of losing her Korean name. Joon-Ho, a boy whom she meets during her visit to Korea, points out that being forced to accept a Canadian name is no different from being forced to take a Japanese name during the Japanese occupation of Korea. However, Mary is still unable to make any direct connection between losing her Korean name and her struggle to embrace her Korean heritage. Instead, she wishes that she could tell her mother: “You can’t force me to be proud of my culture when you’ve given me nothing to be proud of.” She secretly desires a “Canadian” last name to match her first name.

Hearing Joon-Ho call her by her Korean name awakens something magical in Mary. She says, “It was like hearing a lost tune, haunting and lovely.” She even entertains marrying him to keep the name alive. Mary feels empowered when she considers having everyone call her Yu-Rhee, but when she hears a non-Korean say it and “trip” all over it, she realizes its full beauty lies within the larger Korean cultural context.

Unlike Mary, Joon-Ho chooses to take a Canadian name believing it will help him assimilate into Canadian society more easily. He asks Mary to help him find one. Recalling the impact being renamed had on Dunstan Ramsay, a character in the novel Fifth Business, Mary realizes the tremendous responsibility. After considering and rejecting several names (“Almost every other Korean is a Michael.”), Joon-Ho chooses Sean – a name he associates with Sean Connery – a favourite actor who plays James Bond. He is proud of his new name and its association with 007.

It isn’t until Mary is at the University of Toronto, studying sociology that she begins to question power dynamics and starts to understand the full significance of what it meant to her and her brother when they adopted their new names as a means to gain entrance into Canadian society. She begins to fathom the enormous sacrifices her family, in particular, her mother made over the years. By reclaiming the name Yu-Rhee publicly, Mary comes to realize that identity is self-chosen and begins her journey towards personal fulfillment.

She Does The City travels back in time to 1980 and explores Trinity-Bellwoods, an area of Toronto, as it’s described in Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety by Ann Y.K. Choi. Read about how Choi came to write about a Korean girl growing up in Canada and the women she met who inspired this story.

Toronto Gets A Harry Potter Themed Bar

“If you're not a Harry Potter superfan, The Lockhart would seem like any other cool neighbourhood bar. You'll be able to appreciate the name of the joint without needing to know that it also belonged to the most useless Defence Against The Dark Arts professor of all time, and bask in the glow of their heart-shaped sign reading "all was well" without recognizing the inscription as the closing line of the final Harry Potter book.

If you are one of those kids who never quite stopped hoping for an owl to show up with a Hogwarts acceptance letter, however, the week-old bar (formerly known as the Lucy Brock) is packed with nifty Easter eggs that pay tribute to J.K. Rowling's beloved fantasy novels.

There's a hidden Deathly Hallows symbol, a bar area designed to look like a modern apothecary, a small collection of Harry Potter POP! dolls, and a menu that features selections like "Befuddlement Brew", "The Shacklebolt" and "Ludo's Debt" (plus one drink named for a reference so obscure, the owners have promised a free one if you figure it out).

"Without knowing any of the Harry Potter stuff, you already will think of this as a cool bar. You'd come here and see the stag's head on the wall and go 'Wow, I love that', but a Harry Potter fan might say 'That's a Patronus'," explains Paris Xerx, who co-owns the bar with Matt Rocks, his former co-worker at Delecq Wine Bar in the Beach (and an obsessive Harry Potter fan).”

Read more here!

If you're following Judo at the PanAm games, check out Ronda Rousey's memoir! #MyFightYourFight

See you August 13! #embraceyourweird

Toronto! Come join the fun with Simon & Schuster Canada and meet some of your favourite authors this year at INSPIRE! Find us at booth #902. 

Where: Metro Toronto Convention Centre

When: Thursday, November 13th to Sunday, November 16th.

To view the full schedule, click here.

In celebration of #burgerweek, here are 5 steps for making a better burger from The Grilling Book. 

More about Burger week.

We love BURGER WEEK in Toronto. So to kick it off we're sharing Epic Meal Time's All Bacon Burger video.  For more Epic (and excessive) recipes, check out Epic Meal Time's cookbook.

Learn more about Burger Week.

Throwback Thursday: Adelaide and Jarvis Behind our office used to be the Dominion Typewriter Company, now it is home to the restaurant Starfish Oyster bed & grill and where we often take our authors to lunch. 

#TBT: Historical Maps of Toronto

Ever wondered what it'd be like to walk the streets of Toronto during the 19th century? Alpheus Todd, an English-born Canadian librarian and constitutional historian, emigrated to York, Upper Canada in 1833. At the precocious age of 13, Todd produced the following Engraved Plan of the City of Toronto, by walking through the streets and converting his paces to a scale.

In comparison, below is an imaginative rendering of the City of Toronto in 1834 created by E.G.A. Foster.

These depictions of Toronto capture the era during which Don Gutteridge’s popular Marc Edwards mystery series take place -when Americans eyed Canada for annexation and Canadians agitated for autonomy from both Britain and the United States. Marc Edwards, a dashing solicitor bored with legal studies, joins the British army and is posted to Fort York in Toronto, a colonial backwater. Learn more about the series.

"Don Gutteridge combines history and story seamlessly...the pages cannot turn fast enough." - Merry Hakin, Scene Magazine

"“Gutteridge has a fine ear for Victorian voices, a keen eye for style and gets the characters just right.” - Margaret Cannon

#TBT: Getting to Know The Publishing Neighbourhood Edition

So we've taken to wandering about our neighbourhood during our lunch breaks, and wanted to share with you some of the lovely things we've seen/learned.

Simon & Schuster Canada is located in the heart of beautiful downtown Toronto, a block away from the world-famous St. Lawrence Market and our very own author Robert Rotenberg's historic law office:

Today we learned that Robert's law office used to be adjacent to Notman & Fraser, a photography studio founded in 1826:

Please note the ghost boy who must have walked away before the picture was finished ;)

The sunrise this morning in Toronto, our hometown.