Celebrate Canada 150 & Culture Days From Far and Wide - 2017 Multicultural Creative Writing Fest

For celebrating Canada's 150th birthday and Culture Days, for encouraging multicultural creative writing and lightening up community spirit, WS Immigrant and Multicultural Services Society hosted ‘From Far and Wide: 2017 Multicultural Creative Writing Festival’ from 10am to 1pm on September 29 at Richmond Cultural Centre, sponsored by Canada 150, Culture Days, BC Culture Days, City of Richmond, Richmond Cultural Centre and Richmond Public Library. More than 100 people attended the festival despite of the heavy rain.

Greeting Letter from Mayor Malcolm Brodie, City of Richmond

The festival started with the Canada national anthem and MLA John Yap’s welcome speech. He said, it was his honor and privilege to be there for the opening of the wonderful multicultural creative writing festival to celebrate Canada 150 and Culture Days. Canada is truly a special place in the world we’re living. It is important to have wonderful event such as this one to put communities together to celebrate 150 years of, in his opinion, the greatest country in the world, the country welcomes people from all parts of the world. To everyone involved organizing the event, he sent congratulations and great to see a lot of people to perform. He was sure it would be a very meaningful writing festival joining virtual art. Thanks to everyone to be there, on behalf of the province and his colleges, he presented an appreciation certificate to Sophia Zhang and the WSIMS team.

The 2017 Multicultural Creative Writing Contest started on August 15 and will end on October 15, so far around 150 original writings have been received including poems, essays, songs, short stories and more from Canada, China, India, Mongolia, Nigeria, US, New Zealand, etc. The writers' are originally from the background included but not limited to British, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Ireland, England, American, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Korean, New Zealand, Nigeria, Mongolia, Mexican, African and Filipino.

Since September 15, the contest committee, leading by Dr. Jan Walls together with 6 other committee members was informed, each member has 15 votes, the highest voted 15 writings were selected as ‘Touching Canada 2017’ writings. These 15 writings were shared at the 2017 Multicultural Creative Writing Festival.

William Chan, president of Chinese Canadian Writers association, shared his poem Agassiz.

Jude Neale, nominee for the Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, shared her poem Allegro – Wild Berry.

Joyce Goodwin, retired social worker, shared her poem Altered State.

Cheonhak Kwon shared her poem A Poem of Gratitude. The translations of Kwon’s poetry received the Harvard University’s Translation Award and the 41st Korea Times Modern Korean Literature Award.

Bernice Lever, writer, poet, vice president of Vancouver Tagore Society shared her poem Canada – My Second Mother.

Janet Harvey, from Thornhill Ontario, Canada’s Global contest winner, her poem Dare to Dream was selected as one of the 15 ‘Touching Canada 2017’ writings.

Andrea Winterbottom, immigrated from Germany to North Vancouver in 1980, shared her poem Driving Down Memory Lane from Germany to Alberta and B.C.

Forest Torn, by Carol Cram, Chaucer Award and Goethe Award recipient, read by Julie Shen, Rebecca Song, Janine Hu and Jennifer Hu.

Ashok Bhargava, president of Writers International Network Canada at Government of BC., shared his poem In Search of Light, also shared his inspiring recovery story from cancer.