A bonus episode recorded at the Dumpling Summit at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21.

It’s been a tumultuous couple of years inside Iran, with protests over the killing of 22-year-old Masha Amini taking place in dozens of towns and cities around the world. In Toronto, which is home to the second-highest concentration of Iranians immigrants outside of Iran, the Mohyeddin siblings, Sally, Samira and Amir, have run Banu for eighteen years. Banu is an Iranian restaurant that blends political activism and delicious food. Alongside the heaping plates of pomegranate beef...

Apple and pear trees are common sights along the South Shore of Nova Scotia, but a new nursery just outside Lunenburg is bringing a vast array of new species of fruit trees to the area. Originally from Germany, Annette Clarke moved to British Columbia in the early 2000’s to study the ecosystems within the old growth forests of the West Coast. Her love of trees is a life-long one, and it eventually led her to open a nursery in that province. But when climate change brought the threat of...

For many people who are uprooted from their lives in their homeland, the foods of home are often the first things they want to share, and the last connection to home that they hang onto. That’s certainly true for Edmonton’s Reichert family. Saul Reichert was the sole surviving member of his immediate family when he arrived in Canada as a Jewish war orphan aboard the SS Sturgis in 1948. He was one of 1,123 orphans brought to Canada through the Jewish War Orphans Project, spearheaded by...

Growing up, celebrated chef and entrepreneur Vikram Vij wanted to be an actor, but his business-minded father had other ideas. At nineteen, Vij left India for Austria, where he studied hotel management, and landed his first restaurant job at the famed Michelin-starred Post-Stuben restaurant. It was there that a chance encounter with the head of CP Hotels led to a job offer at the Banff Springs Hotel. And so began Vikram Vij’s life in his adopted country of Canada. “I fell in love with...

Growing up in Vancouver as the child of immigrants from China and Hong Kong, journalist Ann Hui had a very specific idea of what so-called authentic Chinese food was. “We would go eat in Chinatown. We would have wonton noodles, we would have dim sum, you know, really elaborate banquets. There were so many different ways of eating Chinese food, in my understanding of that kind of cuisine,” Ann tells host Tina Pittaway in the season premiere of season four of Countless Journeys. But on the...

Season 4 trailer

Gander, Newfoundland was made famous internationally with the hit Broadway musical Come From Away. The Tony Award-winning blockbuster centered around how the town handled the massive influx of stranded airline passengers impacted by the grounding of flights after the September 11th terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001. What a lot of people don’t realize is that Gander was able to handle that crisis in part because of its experience as the site of defections of tens of thousands of...

Rey Tatad moved from the Philippines to Tisdale, Saskatchewan when he was 16 years old. Growing up, he loved illustration, and when it came time to decide on what to major in at University, Rey knew that art was what he wanted to pursue as his life’s work. In 2021 he graduated from the University of Regina with a degree in Fine Arts, picking up a national award for best emerging artist along the way. Rey Tatad’s art explores themes of colonization and identity, and the overlaps between the...

The desire to give children a better life. That’s one of the big, enduring themes in stories about why people leave everything they know behind, to immigrate to another country. And it’s what inspired Ida Beltran Lucila and Jojo Lucila to leave thriving careers in the dance world in the Philippines to start over in Canada. The two met at Ballet Philippines in the early 1980s, where Ida would go on to become a principal ballerina. Jojo’s career as a dancer would end with an injury in his...

The search for justice in an unjust world is a theme that never gets old. And it’s the search for justice that inspires Jorge Requena Ramos and Rafael Reyes in the music they create, along with their bandmates, in The Mariachi Ghost. “The Mariachi Ghost is a man who does not know if he's dead or alive,” explains Ramos. “A rider that comes in the night and finds people who are unjust, who are unfair, who are criminals, who are sinners.” The band mixes the sounds of traditional Mexican music...

Season 3 of Countless Journeys from the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 celebrates the contributions of Canadian immigrants to the performing and visual arts. We begin with a celebration of the life and work of legendary photographer Yousuf Karsh. Karsh was 13 years old when his family fled the Armenian Genocide, escaping to Syria. Two years later, his family sent Karsh, alone, to Halifax, where he was met by an uncle who brought him to his home in Sherbrooke Quebec. Karsh’s life...

Devoting your life to making art takes guts. Many newcomers have, and Canada as a country is richer for it. Join host Paolo Pietropaolo and many incredibly talented artists in the creative and performing arts who also happen to be immigrants to Canada in Season 3 of Countless Journeys. People like The Mariachi Ghost band lead singer Jorge Requina Ramos born in Mexico City but has called Winnipeg home for more than twenty years, famed photographer and Armenian refugee Yousuf Karsh and dancer...

The Game Changers brings us the stories of two men, born just a few years apart, who came to Canada under very different circumstances and who both built hugely successful business empires, starting from scratch. First we hear from legendary broadcaster and publisher Moses Znaimer. The man who brought the music video to Canada. Along with so many more media innovations. Back when most Canadians had access to only a couple of TV channels, Moses Znaimer saw a future filled with channels--each...

Sonja Bata was a young bride from Switzerland when she settled in Ontario with her husband Thomas shortly after the end of World War 2. She joined him in the challenging task of building and expanding the Canadian branch of the world-renowned Bata Shoe Company. Their partnership, both as husband and wife, and business partners, is the stuff of legend. And in this episode of Countless Journeys we hear from their daughter Christine Schmidt, about what drove her mother’s incredible success,...

Wally Buono is the winningest coach in CFL history who led the teams he coached to a remarkable five Grey Cup wins. And that’s on top of the two Grey cups he won as a player. Wally, along with his older brother and his mother arrived at Pier 21 in Halifax from Southern Italy in the early 1950s, on their way to Montreal to join their father. In a wide-ranging conversation with host Paolo Pietropaolo Wally shares the early challenges his family faced after the tragic loss of his father, and...

Generation 1.5 features the stories of three women who had to figure out a whole new life and a whole new identity - before they even knew who they really were. Trey Anthony burst onto the Canadian theatre scene in 2001, with her play Da Kink in My Hair. Da Kink in My Hair became the first play written by a Canadian to be performed at the Princess of Wales Theater in Toronto. It also became the first television series in Canada to be written and created by a Black woman. “I was 12 turning...

Dinner and a movie. It’s the classic evening out. And on our first episode of season 2 of Countless Journeys we hear from two men whose life’s work has been centred on making those two experiences a little bit more pleasurable. First we hear from renowned Montreal chef Nantha Kumar. Born in Malaysia, Nantha came to Canada in the late 1980s where he worked for several years as a journalist. He shifted gears to cooking in the 1990s, revolutionizing the food scene in Montreal’s Plateau...

Our second season of Countless Journeys shares the stories of how immigrants from a wide background of countries and cultures contribute to this country daily. By creating families, businesses and communities, immigrants have had a profound and lasting impact on Canadian life. We hear from them in their own words, through original interviews as well as oral histories, as they share with us both the obstacles and the fun they experience on their way to building lives that would create...

In this episode: * Bostjan Skrlj an adventurist originally from Slovenia who was motorcycling around the world, and stopped in Whitehorse. * Gaetan Pierrard is a musher from Belgium who also lives in the Yukon. * Yogi Omar from Indonesia, arrived in Canada as a student, today is a business owner and LGBTQ2+ activist in Vancouver.

In this episode: * Erlinda and Armand Tesoro. Erlinda arrived in 1968 from the Philippines to work in the Garment Industry. * Musician Yosvanii Castañeda defected 40 years later during a stopover in Toronto from Japan to Cuba.

* War Bride Gladys Merrigan moved to Halifax after the war to join her husband. She still lives in the house he built for her. * VP Audience Engagement at the Museum, Carrie-Ann Smith speaks about the significance of the war brides who came to Canada. * Sheena Rossiter and Sandro Silva share their international love story which took them from London to Sao Paulo to Rio and most recently Edmonton, AB.