Shelagh Rogers loves Gung Haggis Fat Choy™ - special dinner auction item!
My telephone chat with Shelagh Rogers this morning was about how we will co-host the Gung Haggis Fat Choy™ dinner. "Todd, I just think what you are doing is so wonderful," Shelagh tells me. "When we had you on the show at the Roundhouse in 2003, I had no idea..." It is such a joy having Shelagh Rogers come to be a co-host with me so that this esteemed host for CBC Radio's "Sounds Like Canada," can now experience what she missed out on back in 2003, when she first listened with such interest about how I was bringing together Robbie Burns Day and Chinese New Year through music, food and poetry.
Shelagh loves that our co-hosting and the show itself will be very spontaneous. "The beauty of live performance," she called it. Performers will interact with other performers that they have never... up to this point... met before. Definitely a once in a lifetime - never to be reproduced experience. Along with Tom Chin, we will rotate our co-hosts to introduce various topics such as Chinese New Year, Scottish Hogmanay, Robbie Burns and cultural fusion. We will then maybe read a poem, or introduce the next performers. We will at times interact with the audience to create a wonderful intimate dinner for 500. "I want that line," exclaims Shelagh enthusiastically.
It was back in September 2003, that Haggis Wun Tun came into being. I was invited by senior producer Anne Penman at "Sounds Like Canada" to be one of 4 people asked to present Shelagh with "Welcome to Vancouver" gifts to celebrate the show's move from Toronto. The other guests were James Delgado of the Vancouver Maritime Museum, Chief Wendy Grant of the Musqueam Band, and Manpreet Grewal, Indo-Canadian writer. I was chosen as a member of many communities, because of my work with Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop, Dragon boat races, etc etc.
My gift to Shelagh recognized the history of Chinese Canadians in BC, as I paid respect to my ancestral lineage of Rev. Chan Yu Tan who arrived in Canada in 1896. A ceramic statue of "Gwang Goong, the Chinese patron saint of Sojourners, surrounded by Lo Bok Goh - turnip cake that my Great Grandmother Kate Lee would make for me, Apple Tarts from Chinatown like those my father would always bring home from Chinatown when I was a child, and the first creations of Haggis Wun Tun, to represent the 5th,6th and 7th generations of our famility that are born of dual and multiple heritages in this country.
"Your haggis wun-tun and plum sauce go together like Bogart and Bacall, what a wonderful marriage of cultures," said Shelagh. She was thrilled with the invention of Haggis Wun Tun. She even took the rest home with her.
Still thrilled with the ideas of Gung Haggis Fat Choy™,
At what price do we now start the bidding?
Check out these stories about me & Shelagh or Christmas Eve Morning on Sounds Like Canada.
