Chinese-Canadian Cuisine
Chinese-Canadian restaurants have long been a staple of small towns across Canada — where through ingenuity, Chinese-Canadians have been able to thrive despite encountering economic and systemic discrimination. Lok Ki-Mak, owner and chef at Lee’s Village Restaurant in Steinbach, Manitoba, shares his experiences, explaining how several rural Manitoban restaurants are the result of a close-knit Chinese-Canadian community.
Episode Transcript
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EPISODE CREDITS
Written and narrated by Quinn MacNeil
Produced by Kent Davies
Interview participant: Lok Ki-Mak
Hosted by Kent Davies and Janis Thiessen
Episode image & web formatting: Kimberley Moore
Theme music: Robert Kenning
INTERVIEWS
Lok Ki-Mak, interview by Sarah Story, June 18, 2018 in Steinbach, MB. Digital Audio Recording. Manitoba Food History Project, “Steinbach Interviews," Oral History Centre Archive, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, MB.
MUSIC
Podington Bear – Relinquish
Lee Rosevere - Curiosity
Blue Dot Sessions – Children of Lemuel, Ervira, Jat Poure, Lakeside Path, Simple Vale, and Valantis Vespers.
Jahzzar – Improv1
SOURCES
Bill Cunningham, Bill, “Chinese-Canadians enter the professions,” CBC News,July 14, 1957. Accessed September 5, 2019.
Chan, Anthony B., “Chinese-Canadians” In the Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. May 22, 2019. Accessed September 5, 2019.
Chan, Arlene, “Chinese-Head Tax” Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. September 8, 2016. Accessed September 5, 2019.
Cho, Lily, Eating Chinese: Culture on the Menu in Small Town Canada (Toronto Ont: University of Toronto Press, 2010).
“Chop Suey Nation,” CBC Books, January, 25 2019. Accessed, September 5 2019.
Hui, Ann, Chop Suey Nation: The Legion Cafe and Other Stories from Canada’s Chinese Restaurants, (Vancouver, BC: Douglas & McIntyre, 2019).
Hui, Ann, “Part one: Searching for Huang Feng Zhu” Globe and Mail November 12, 2017. Accessed September 5, 2019.
Lai, David Chuenyan, Chinatowns: Towns within Cities in Canada, (Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 1987).
Ray, Krishnendu, The Ethnic Restaurateur (London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016).
Smart, Josephine, "Ethnic entrepreneurship, transmigration, and social integration: an ethnographic study of Chinese restaurant owners in rural western Canada." Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development (2003): 311-342.