Since 2002, Canada has celebrated Asian Heritage Month during the month of May.
Every year since then, Madhu Verma has organized a month-long cultural celebration and education.
Verma is the founder of New Brunswick’s Asian Heritage Society, and has remained active within her home city of Fredericton and throughout the province for nearly 20 years.
“Our main goal is education, public education, and also working in the schools on the curriculum,” says Verma. “The Asian population is growing, not only in New Brunswick…I came here, New Brunswick, in 1963 when my husband got a teaching position at UNB. I faced racism and I was very young. So then I started I say, ‘Well, I’m not going to just listen, I should act. What can I do?”
Verma went on to form the New Brunswick Asian Heritage Society and the Multicultural Association of Fredericton. She says her goal is to educate all New Brunswickers about multiculturalism in order to create “one community” based in understanding.
“My goal is that there should not be discrimination or racial hate crimes,” says Verma. “Through education, we could make life better for newcomers and other visible minorities Canadian.”
The Asian Heritage Society usually puts on a cultural exhibition gala at venues such as the Fredericton Playhouse and the Moncton Capitol Theatre.
During COVID-19, Verma says there will be more online educational components instead.
The Multicultural Society has chapters in Moncton, Miramichi, and St. John as well as Fredericton, and visits schools all over the province.
“This year’s educational project, we are planning to [teach about] head covering traditions,” explains Verma.
Asian food will be another educational component this year, says Verma.
“Rice is the main food. Rice, of course, is a food, but then we have some traditional use of the rice. This will be interesting for schools, we are thinking of grade school or middle school.”
Verma says this education component of Asian Heritage Month is vital in combating the increasing anti-Asian racism since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“CBC [was] talking about racism against Asian-Canadians,” Verma recalls. “We feel that we need public education.”
On top of educational and cultural celebration, the Asian Heritage Society also helps newcomers and immigrants settle in New Brunswick.
Verma says that newcomers are isolated, and underemployed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Jobs are limited, and a lot of people are laid off,” says Verma. “Some of them feeling kind of depressed because they can’t even travel. [For] example in India, the situation is very bad. We have a few members of our community, their close relatives passed away, and they can’t even go there. So it’s kind of cut off, we are cut off from the world…It is affecting everybody.”
