25 episodes

Countless Journeys & D’innombrables Voyages are original shows created by the Canadian Museum of Immigration located at Pier 21 in Halifax, the site of arrival for nearly a million immigrants. Connect to the human side of immigration through stories that warm the heart, build empathy and highlight the contributions made by newcomers. Dive into our shared history and honour those who now call Canada home as our guests share the challenges, joy and unexpected humour they’ve experienced along the way. This is Countless Journeys.

Countless Journeys Countless Journeys

    • History
    • 5.0 • 31 Ratings

Countless Journeys & D’innombrables Voyages are original shows created by the Canadian Museum of Immigration located at Pier 21 in Halifax, the site of arrival for nearly a million immigrants. Connect to the human side of immigration through stories that warm the heart, build empathy and highlight the contributions made by newcomers. Dive into our shared history and honour those who now call Canada home as our guests share the challenges, joy and unexpected humour they’ve experienced along the way. This is Countless Journeys.

    Bonus Episode – The Dumpling Summit

    Bonus Episode – The Dumpling Summit

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

    • 9 min
    Banu - The Mohyeddins’ Mission

    Banu - The Mohyeddins’ Mission

    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 tenderloin and okra and eggplant stew are reminders of the politics of the home they left behind. Photos of Iranian political prisoners line the walls at the front entrance. There's a memorial to the victims of flight 752 shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard with 176 passengers aboard, 138 of them destined for Canada. And amidst the protests of the last year and a half inside Iran and beyond, that sense of community support has swelled.

    “People have been coming in the restaurant and saying, Hey, we support you. And I'm usually in the kitchen so my sister's in the front, and then hug my sister and then just leave.,” says Banu head chef Amir Mohyeddin. “So I find a lot of non- Iranians are now getting it. And even Iranians, there's some Iranians who come in there who's never been political and they're like, wow. Thank you so much for doing this.” 

    This episode of Countless Journeys takes you inside the history of Banu, as we hear what the Mohyeddins wanted to create through Banu that they couldn’t find anywhere else in Toronto, and their hopes for their homeland in a time of incredible change.

    • 29 min
    Exotic Fruit Company - Annette Clarke

    Exotic Fruit Company - Annette Clarke

    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 intensified forest fires and longer-than-usual droughts, Annette began to look for a new home that would be suitable for herself, her son, and the 65 varieties of exotic fruit trees she has nurtured and experimented with, including guavas, figs and persimmons.

    Countless Journeys host Tina Pittaway visits the Exotic Fruit Nursery to hear more about Annette’s obsession with fruit trees, and what she has planned for her new life in Lunenburg County.

    • 23 min
    How to Share an Egg - Bonny and Saul Reichert

    How to Share an Egg - Bonny and Saul Reichert

    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 the Canadian Jewish Congress.

    Saul soon found work at a diner called Teddy’s Restaurant, and would go on to become owner of Teddy’s as well as many others over the years.

    In her upcoming book, How to Share An Egg, A True Story of Love, Hunger, and Plenty, Saul’s daughter Bonny explores what she considers the guiding principle of her life: that food equals life.

    Through family stories as well as her own experiences Bonny weaves her family's devastating losses in the Holocaust with her own coming of age story. 

    “When I was a child, there was always the idea that I would write my dad's story, that I would write the story of his survival and the things that had happened to him. And I wanted to do it, but I couldn't do it. I didn't think I was worthy of it,” says Bonny.
    It wasn't until Bonny visited Poland where she saw the sights of the horrors her family experienced that she felt she could find a way into these stories.

    “And I started to see that maybe instead of writing my father's story, I could write my story of being my father's daughter. And a little later I started to realize that maybe I could tell that story through food, which was this theme that came up again and again and again throughout not just my life, but my father's life too.”

    In this episode we join Bonny as she prepares a dish Saul remembers his mother cooking for Shabbat, and hear Saul recount his harrowing story of surviving the Polish ghettos of Pabianice and Lodz that he and his beloved family were forced into in Poland, and his ultimate survival of Birkenau.

    • 32 min
    The Spice of Life - Vikram Vij

    The Spice of Life - Vikram Vij

    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 world called India, but I actually live in the best democracy in the world called Canada,” Vij says.

    From Banff, it was on to Vancouver, where Vij would build a network of restaurants with his former wife and business partner Meeru Dhalwala, and satisfy the entertainer in his soul with appearances on shows like Dragons’ Den, Top Chef Canada and Recipe to Riches.

    Countless Journeys is brought to you by the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, located at the Halifax Seaport.

    • 30 min
    Chop Suey Nation - Ann Hui

    Chop Suey Nation - Ann Hui

    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 Chinese restaurants that are common across the country. “There would always be that one restaurant on the main street. It was always called Fortune something or Garden or Panda or Jade, something.”

    Similar in décor, and with menu items that were a mystery to Ann – things like moo goo gai pan, chicken balls, and almond chicken, dishes that were created for local tastes – she wanted to learn why, in pre-internet days, so many of these restaurants were so similar to one another.

    So when Ann was hired as a food writer for the Globe and Mail back in 2016, she set out on a road trip that took her from Victoria to Fogo Island in search of answers.

    Her series eventually became the subject of her book, Chop Suey Nation: The Legion Café and Other Stories from Canada’s Chinese Restaurants. Part personal memoir, and part cultural history, Ann shares not only the stories of the people who own these businesses, but also the stories of the historical forces that in part led to these Chinese restaurants' creation, including an infamous piece of legislation, commonly referred to as the Chinese Exclusion Act, which became law 100 years ago in 1923.

    Countless Journeys is brought to you by the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, located at the Halifax Seaport.

    • 41 min

Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5
31 Ratings

31 Ratings

O Marilia ,

The Yukon! The war brides and so much more!

I always try to listen to many podcasts and some days I like the stories other days I keep looking for something else! Well today I hit the jackpot! Love all the stories since they are about real people and their lives!
I will be listen daily! Thanks!👏👏👏

I just realized that your last podcast was middle of 2020! I hope you will continue again!!!!!

blingns69 ,

Pier 21 Podcast Countless Journeys Worth the Wair!!

In these confusing and confounding time with lots of bad news, it is great to hear stories showing humanity at its best!! Well done!

Some White Fella From Canada ,

Great Podcast

The first few episodes of any new podcast are usually a work in progress, but this was spot on from the start. Can’t wait to hear more!

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