[LINK] "Building a bridge, from Vancouver to Tehran"

[rfmcdonald]

On Thursday, The Globe and Mail featured an article by Hadami Ditmars about the growing Iranian-Canadian community in Vancouver, in her article "Building a bridge, from Vancouver to Tehran".

Geography, in fact, partly accounts for Vancouver's popularity amongst Iranians. The mountains and waterways of the North Shore in particular remind many of the Caspian Sea, a popular vacation spot in the North of Iran, full of forests and rivers. Some areas of North and West Vancouver are reminiscent of the desirable residential area in the North of Tehran, whose mountainous views are literally elevated from the smog and poverty of the south side (the wrong side of the tracks and the voter stronghold of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad).

While a small Iranian community existed in Vancouver as early as the 1950s, it was the bloody aftermath of the 1979 Revolution that heralded the first major wave of emigration. As the Iran/Iraq war raged on through the eighties and political and religious freedoms were curtailed under the new regime, more and more immigrants and refugees arrived in Canada.

And still they are coming. Ramin Mahjoury came of age listening to Googoosh in the seventies, endured a dramatic escape from Iran in 1983, and is currently a North Vancouver resident and editor of the leading Farsi weekly, Payvand. Mr. Mahjoury, who is also host of City TV's Living Together observes, "I used to go to concerts and know almost everyone in the crowd. Tonight, all the faces are new."

Compared with Toronto, home to approximately 80,000 Iranians, or Montreal, home to 20,000, Vancouver's lower mainland has a more concentrated community per capita. While Toronto has often been the traditional choice for business people because of its robust economy and proximity to Europe, Vancouver's gentler climate and natural beauty continue to attract a wide range of Iranian immigrants.

Vancouver is an increasingly sought-after destination for many artists and musicians seeking artistic freedom and less stringent post-9/11 entry requirements than the United States - where Los Angeles, the epicentre for California's approximately one million Iranians, is known as "Tehrangeles." While L.A. is the unofficial capital of Persian pop music, Vancouver is attracting many classical musicians such as Hossein Behrouzinia, a famous composer and player of barbat - a kind of Persian lute. And in recent years, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra has teamed up with Persian tar master Amir Koushkani for concerts of East-meets-West classical fusion.

Ditmars has another article on Iranian-Canadians in Vancouver at the Discover Vancouver website. Interestingly, a recent CBC Vancouver article drawing on the recent census revealed that the Iranian-Canadian community is one of the most geographically clustered of Vancouver's different communities, ranking behind Vancouver's Jewish population.