Canada is home to over 200 different ethnic groups and 200 different spoken languages, and there are over 60 different Indigenous languages that are spoken across the country. Diversity is a part of every city across Canada, big and small. One of the advantages of living in Canada’s biggest and most populated cities is that they tend to offer the greatest exposure to getting a taste of the “world”. So, big cities like Toronto (and the GTA) and Vancouver are most likely to provide an authentic international experience when it comes to authentic cuisine and dress, but capital cities will beat out big cities in terms of cultural exchange.
What makes cities like Ottawa and D.C. so interesting is that they host a countless number of foreign missions and international organizations, and they often offer a more informative glimpse into the world. But as tasty as ethnic recipes can be, as cool as ethnic wardrobes may look, and as informative as cultural seminars can be, fun is what makes for an unforgettable time. And for the longest time, Greek-Canadians have been the rulers of fun.
Back when ethnic festivals started to become a thing, the first real festival in Ottawa was the Greek Fest back in the 1970s, and nobody has managed to reach the heights that the Greeks did with their festival. The OGs of Ottawa gave Ottawa an authentic experience of Greece, one which used to go well past midnight, with Greek music pulsing through the city and into the early morning hours. Then there was how the Greek Fest offered great deals on alcohol because of great hook ups, which eventually dried up after festivals started asking for Greek benefits without being “Greek”. Seriously, it was one of the best festivals ever, but if one really wanted to nitpick and find a flaw, it was that their festival never found a way to recreate the Mykonos vibe.
Fast forward to 2024, while the Greek-Canadians will forever hold the title as the festival OGs of Ottawa, rumor has it that there is a group of “new-school” cool kids on the block, the Serbian-Canadians. These hot shots are doing things quite different, breaking the glass ceiling, because the Greek-Canadians have broken all the plates (Zorba).
Welcome/Bienvenue/Marhaba/Bienvenido/Wilkommen/Huanying/Svaagat to the Serb Fest.
The Serbian community, a much smaller and less rooted community in Ottawa, recently celebrated the 17th annual Serbian Festival over Labor Day Weekend. The festival grounds feature a recently built Church, activities for children, snacks and goodies not found in stores, savory cuisine and pastry delicacies, and great music and dance.
Parents with children can bring their children to learn how to write in Cyrillic, to dress up in ethnic wardrobe, and to get their face painted. The kitchen chef creates an assortment of traditional dishes, guaranteeing to meet various foodie diets. The pastry options feature a variety of sweet styles from creamy pastries to layered pastries. What makes the dance portion of the festival quite cool is that each night of the three-day festival features a competition for the best male and female kolo dancer, with the winners receiving a silver coin.
As someone who remembers the humble beginnings of the first Serbian Church in Ottawa, a single-story “bungalow”, where my parents and I attended long before the new Church was built, today’s Church would be unimaginable back then. Then, as someone who has had the opportunity to experience the festival as an attendee, as a MC host, and as a guest greater and candle seller inside the Church, the most fun has been as the latter.
Disclaimer: The “Number-1 Ranked” beeswax candles are only available at the Serb Fest in Ottawa.
Since the Serbian Church is the front facing entry point to the Serbian Festival, which takes place at the back of the community hall, festival goers love to walk inside to get a glimpse of the structure. Although the exterior is finished and the inside has weekly masses, there are still some interior touch ups remaining like the painting of Byzantine-style frescas and a few other things. The short info tour I give visitors, in addition to selling candles, starts with, “Is this your first Serbian Fest?” Depending on the answers, it then incorporates geo-history facts like highlighting how the stones above the Church entrance were procured from Italy, how the floors are going to be made with marble and most likely procured from Greece and how there are plans for an eight-meter-wide chandelier that would likely be procured from either from Serbia or Russia. And that is how an info tour goes, but an Alek-led “info tour” takes info tours to a whole other level.
My 2024 info tour was styled in the spirit of Saturday Night Live (1975-Present), Mad TV (1995-2009) and Whose Line Is It Anyway (1998-2007), with remarks like how nobody will catch me standing underneath the future eight-meter-wide chandelier because of my luck. How Serbs do not have a confessional booth, meaning one of two things; we never sin, or we hide our sins better than the rest. How the concept known as “work-life balance” is to blame for anything that gets delayed. How the “Death Row” chain that Snoop Dogg gifted me this past June had saved me from a major burn while I was removing a burnt-out candle, by absorbing 99% of fire flame. And there was a lot more improvising, and all of it in good spirits.
On at least 100 of those info tours, people were laughing out loud and failing to respect the “quiet rules”, before telling me that my tour was the best thing ever, and unlike anything they have experience at any festival elsewhere. Although I always make sure to let the visitors know that I forgive them for their hooting and hollering laughs, I also like to suggest the best way to repent is by purchasing a beeswax candle, ranging from $1 to $25, and lighting it at the altar. Additionally, I also make sure to mention how festival goers can win silver coins on each night of the festival by answering the call to dance the kolo. However, I slightly exaggerate the truth by saying the judging criteria is based on 90% enthusiasm and 10% skill and encourage them to be as lively as humanely possible. It sets the tone for the rest of their festival experience, and at the end of each night visitors return to tell me how the food and pastries are just as good as my jokes – my jokes are worthy of a Netflix special.
There were chats with Lebanese-Canadians, Portuguese-Canadians, Nigerian-Canadians, Indian-Canadians, Chinese-Canadians, and countless other ethnic Canadian communities. The two most memorable chats this year were with a mixed marriage couple, a Serbian-Canadian and a Irish-Canadian, and two Italian-Canadian families. What started out as an info tour of the Church and history of Serbian-Canadians in Ottawa for the mixed marriage couple somehow segued into a conversation about baseball and a shared similarity for our love for our favourite baseball player, Mark McGwire (I also like Barry Bonds), our hate for Jose Conseco, and we both came clean about being steroid era kind of guys.
When the two Italian-Canadian families came into the Church, what started as an info tour also transitioned to a conversation about Christmas and the Italian delicacy, panettone. The two Italian-Canadian families were “old school” Italians when it came to panettone, panettone with raisins or other dried fruits. Whereas, I raved about a fancy pistachio cream panettone that I bought my “nonna” for Christmas. Although there was that shared similarity for our love towards panettone, the two Italian-Canadian families could never imagine eating 97% of a panettone that they might gift their “nonnas”, like I had done.
Near the end of our chat, the two Italian-Canadian families reference the NBC sitcom, Seinfeld (1989-1998). They mentioned how in the episode “The Conversion”, George converted to Orthodoxy, but his relationship to his Latvian girlfriend still fell through. Then I built upon that by suggesting a few other episodes “The Chaperone” and “The Abstinence”, that involved baseball and a Miss America pageant queen. Explaining how I still struggle to understand how it was George, a home-run machine himself, who taught New York Yankee legend, Derek Jeter, how to hit home runs, and how he always happened to strike out when it came to the ladies. None of us could make sense of it.
By the end of the three-day festival, hundreds of new friendships were made, but most exciting was how so many visitors were excited about next year’s Serb Fest. About the food, pastries and festivities, but also for part two of my “Netflix” special, and how the Guinness Book of World Records confirmed that the “Number-1 Ranked” beeswax candles are only available for lighting at the Serb Fest in Ottawa. So, anyone who finds themselves in Ottawa for Labour Day weekend in 2025, visiting the Serb Fest in Ottawa is a must, because there is nothing quite like it!