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 Canada. I fell in love with Banff. And I always tell people I come from one of the largest democracies in the ..read more

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 occasions that Ann got outside of the urban setting of Vancouver, she was fascinated by the small town Chin ..read more

Season 4 trailer ..read more

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 refugees from Eastern Bloc countries during the Soviet era. Some days more than 300 people would claim r ..read more

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 culture that he came from, and the culture he is contributing to now here in Canada. “I am definitely on ..read more

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 early twenties, but he continued as a choreographer for the Filipino military, whose musical productions rou ..read more

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 with searing rock and four-part harmonies inspired by Mennonite choirs. In this conversation with Countle ..read more

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 story, from refugee to world-class photographer, unfolds, along with more than 100 of his portraits, in a ..read more

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 Ida Beltran Lucilla, former principal ballerina with Ballet Philippines. This is Countless Journeys. Lis ..read more

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 catering to a small slice of the market. And he began launching networks that would do just that. He fou ..read more