Nepalese community organizations across Canada made a hard, unified call this weekend: pause the celebration. Annual Teej festivals in cities across the country were cancelled after devastating flash flooding hit Nepal and China, a decision that says as much about the strength of the diaspora’s ties back home as it does about grief.
Teej is one of the most significant cultural and spiritual celebrations on the Nepali calendar, marked by fasting, prayer, and gathering, primarily among women, to honour marital and family bonds. It’s also one of the biggest community events of the year for Nepali diaspora organizations, the kind of gathering that takes months of planning and brings generations together. Cancelling it isn’t a small or easy decision.
Why a Celebration Gets Paused
When a natural disaster hits the country your community traces its roots to, celebration can start to feel impossible, even from thousands of kilometres away. Cancelling Teej this year is a way of publicly grieving alongside family and communities back home, rather than continuing on as though the celebration exists in a separate space from the crisis.
Vancouver is home to a growing Nepali community, part of the same coast-to-coast network of diaspora organizations that made this decision collectively rather than city by city. That kind of coordinated response across a national diaspora doesn’t happen without real organizing infrastructure already in place, built over years of exactly these kinds of cultural gatherings.
How to Show Up
If you’re looking for a way to support, reaching out to local Nepali community organizations directly is a good place to start — many are coordinating relief efforts alongside their own community’s needs right now. Solidarity doesn’t require being part of the community to show up for it.
Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the flooding, both here and back home.
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