Opinion 10
Ashburton Guardian
Friday, February 7, 2014
www.guardianonline.co.nz
OUR VIEW
Celebrating our past and our future Sue Newman
SENIOR REPORTER
S
trolling among the many thousand strong Waitangi Day crowds in Ashburton yesterday one clear message hit home – Ashburton is now a multi-cultural community. Waitangi Day may be a time to reflect on what it means to be a New Zealander, but that reflection now comes without a clear definition. Thirty, even 20 years ago, New Zealanders were generally of two camps, those with Maori heritage or those whose roots ran back to the United Kingdom. We were a bi-cultural nation, never more so than in mainstream Ashburton. Yes, as a country we have always been home to people of many nationalities, but in a short space of time the numbers who now call Aotearoa home has rapidly increased. New Zealanders today come in every shape, colour and creed. The world now calls our place home. Ashburton has been fortunate to have won a large share in New Zealand’s increasing multi-culturalism and yesterday that rich human harvest was celebrated in the Multi Cultural Bite festival which has become a Waitangi Day icon. As it does every year, the festival attracted thousands of people from around Canterbury who came to stroll Ashburton’s East Street, swapping festival dollars for tastes of extraordinarily good food. The festival’s concept is simple. Gather together people from your own home country, cook up a storm and sell the food to strangers. And for many groups, there is also an opportunity to turn on entertainment with music and dance from their homeland. What the public sees tells just half the story. Behind each food stall are a group of people who have left their homeland, who have come as strangers to a new town, in a new country to create a new home. That was yesterday. Today those same people step back and become Kiwis again, becoming one of us – one people, working and walking behind one flag. In Ashburton it is clear Waitangi Day has a new definition – it’s a time to celebrate our past as a nation, as a people but it is also a time to celebrate our tomorrows, based on our new multicultural future.
YOUR VIEW Old time tearooms This may seem a low key gripe in today’s climate of moans, but why has Ashburton no longer got a “tearooms” of the old style. Sandwiches, savouries, cream cakes etc. Not the six and eight dollar creations that we see everywhere. I take elderly folk out frequently and no where provides the above in any quantity. Beneficiaries and pensioners make up a large part of the community but are excluded by default from the ‘cafe ‘ environment.
Nek Nominate Re the Ashburton father that
CRUMB
LETTERS participated in the stupid drinkng game, let him and the rest of the idiots die. Why should the health system fix them up, they take up valuable medical care. I feel sorry for his child having such a no-hoper for a father.
Stolen cockatoos Cocky is easily identified by one of his phrases of “hello cocky”. To the parasites who took these birds I can assure you, you will be feeling the heat soon if you don’t reveal the location of these birds as this is the only way to save your worthless butts. This was bound to happen as there are no bars on the windows? Come on.
by David Fletcher
Calf slaughter Wily how dare you blame the Chilean people and Chile’s regulations and so-called lack of infrastructure for the disgusting and inhumane calf slaughter . Manuka has been set up by some of New Zealand dairying’s finest. If these people are so astute and well informed I would wonder that they did not factor into the equation a legal and humane way to dispose of the unwanted by-product of the clean green dairy industry. All power to the Chileans; they have rules they abide by and a conscience. I hope they win the court case against Manuka NZ. Shirley
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