09/06/2026
My Sunday morning ponder…
I sat down this morning, which is usually where the trouble starts with me, and stared out at this beautiful little dream we’ve been building here🍀💚
And I started thinking about something I say all the time: You are welcome here!
I think I say it so much because I haven’t always felt welcome myself. So somewhere along the way, I decided I would just create the space I wished existed, because tjere are probably others out there.
Then my mind wandered to Regina’s Mosaic and I thought… wouldn’t it be amazing to do our own multicultural event at Clocktower Corner next summer?
Food, family recipes, traditions and the stories behind them.
Maybe this idea has been brewing longer than I realized. Our own family has become a wonderful mixture since our ancestors crossed the big ponds — German 🇩🇪, Scottish 🏴, Ukrainian 🇺🇦, Chilean 🇨🇱, Japanese 🇯🇵, Russian 🇷🇺, First Nations 🇨🇦, Hungarian 🇭🇺 — and family who have lived in places like India 🇮🇳 and Ethiopia 🇪🇹. Growing up, I worked for a couple from Thailand 🇹🇭. Just yesterday I found myself visiting with customers who had lived in Israel 🇮🇱 and Siberia.
And lately, food seems to be where so many of these stories meet.
Around the kitchen table.
Over the past few months we’ve made a wonderful group of Ukrainian friends. We’ve celebrated Ukrainian New Year with them, sat in their homes and shared their food. And inevitably the stories start…
“This is what my mom made.”
“This was my grandfather’s recipe.”
“Never bake angry because you don’t want to make people sick.”
And one of my favourites I’ve heard along the way — always stir your soup clockwise or you’ll put bad juju into the meal.
I LUVZ that stuff 💚
Because suddenly it isn’t just a bowl of soup or something someone baked. There’s a person who came before them attached to it. A place. A memory. A story that gets told one more time and keeps another generation alive.
And, well… Scott and I are foodies. We’ve been known to sit in a restaurant while on vacation discussing where we’re going to eat next. So there may be slightly selfish motives involved here too.
Imagine Clocktower Corner filled for one day with different cultures, traditional foods, family recipes, music, stories and people simply sharing a little piece of where they came from.
Nothing political. That will NEVER be what my page or this place is about.
Just people, food, stories and that same message we started with:
You are welcome here 🙏 🥰
I think we might have just found ourselves another adventure for next summer.
Of course, now it needs a name… 🤔
Enjoy the rest of your weekend. We’ll be returning messages Wednesday and heading back into the lab!
