Tuesday, May 13 at 8 p.m.
Pati Jinich finishes the first leg of her Pan-American journey in Alberta, traveling through Canada’s heartland to Edmonton and Calgary and south to the Montana border. As the peaks of the Canadian Rockies give way to wide-open prairies, cowboy and immigrant communities work together in the constant creation of a new Canadian identity.
Jinich dives into cowboy culture at John Scott’s ranch, the backdrop for many westerns, and learns about Canada’s connection to Hollywood. Then she visits the town of Wildwood, founded by Canada’s first black settlers who migrated north from the U.S.
In Edmonton, Jinich eats butter chicken with food writer Ramneek Singh, and, in Calgary, meets Nigerian chef Kunbi Olalere who is introducing locals to her culture’s cuisine through a Nigerian-Canadian fusion menu at her restaurant Ahinke’s Kitchen. Many Albertans have Ukrainian heritage and are welcoming refugees from the war in Ukraine.
Jinich shares a meal with a family who recently immigrated from Ukraine and the people who helped them resettle and visits Don’ya, a kitchen providing jobs and community to newly arrived Ukrainian women.
Continuing southward towards Montana, Jinich learns why Alberta is known as the “Texas of Canada” at the Bonjean family flower winery, then visits a family who recently started a new life outside the city on a farm.
Jinich wraps her journey on a medicine walk with ancestors of the First People to ever call this land home, the indigenous mother-daughter duo Matricia and Mackenzie Brown, known as the “Warrior Women.”
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