Hoja YEG-GA y Las Páginas Mexicanas Ilustradas (cont.)
Página Núm. 3: Los Mercados de La Memoria Mexicana, 2017
Within this third installment of viñetas documenting the travels of Hoja YEG-GA and S.O. we find the wandering duo revisiting some of the most important places in Edmonton that have shaped S.O.'s memoria mexicana, including her favourite diner, farmer's market, and Mexican establishment called Zocalo. At the onset of 2017, S.O. had secured full-time employment at one of Edmonton's Inner-city non-profit organizations, an experience that she treasures dearly. That vocational path did not necessarily mean that she would abandon her passion for diners and farmers markets in Western Canada, as the following Canada Y150 accounts clearly reveal.
Route 99 Diner
Edmonton, June 7, 2017. 24°C
I’ve written about my love for diners previously for this project, but, so far, I have yet to write about my experiences at these establishments in Edmonton. The first time I stayed over at my partner’s house he invited me over to the diner found at the corner of his street to have breakfast. My partner had constantly talked about this diner and ate there frequently so even the waitresses knew the breakfast order by heart. Since it is only a block away I could see the convenience in eating there, but what I loved almost immediately are the booths, the walls covered in old ads, and the records (Elvis Presley’s) that almost completely cover the walls of the entire place. Nowadays, it is our “new tradition” to make a pilgrimage to “the Diner” for our “Breakfast Wednesday”, and the plates tend to be so huge we have opted for our shared order which the waitress knows perfectly as “bacon diner omelet with rye bread, one buttered one dry” and the bottomless coffee cups. We usually stay for at least an hour at the diner reading, doing sudoku or completing the free Metro newspaper’s crossword puzzle together. The establishment also has become our “go to” place when it’s too cold to grab dinner somewhere else or when we are just too lazy to walk a few more blocks to Whyte Ave, located directly South and, “por la derecha”, Southwest within Strathcona’s urban landscape grid. Furthermore, this diner has been the place of arguments, fights, laughs and impromptu chocolate milkshakes (chocolate only, because there is no better flavour) after dance class. It is OUR PLACE, the one venue where I have never taken anyone else to eat and the eatery where I have never gone without my partner.
Old Strathcona Farmer’s Market
Edmonton, June 10, 2017.10°C
The first job that I have ever had in Canada was during the end of my second year at university at the Old Strathcona Farmer’s Market where I worked for Four Whistle Farm. The opportunity was appeared very randomly when I decided to stay in Edmonton for “Spring Term” until the end of the Summer. While taking my Community Service Learning Class at the university I worked on a project with two other people from a non-profit organization. One of those co-workers mentioned she worked for the farmer’s market and that the stall next to their’s was always short on people. She wondered if I wanted to work for them. Given my family passion for markets it seemed like a good idea. I gave her my phone info thought nothing of it until I got a text message from my current boss asking me if I would mind working for him the following Saturday. No interview. No phone call. No face-to-face exchange and the job was mine!
The job training was even quicker than the way I had been hired. I was told to stack eggs and sell. All the other trade secrets I would learn “on the job” during the following years. I worked part time at this job on and off until I finished university, when I started working full time. Stuck in Edmonton and with no job prospects when my boss gave me the opportunity. And I have, with this job, learned my first practical lessons in management, encouraging our team to work hard, while overseeing different employees with limited English skills and training new hires. I have had so much fun with customers, co-workers and my boss, and learned more about the Albertan staple of meat than any human has ever had to know. And, as a result, I now realized that many people have “zero idea” where their food actually comes from or how it is processed. This job has given me the rare opportunity (yes, Mexican meat pun intended) to visit rural Alberta where I can attest that country “caminos” or rural routes are all named “Range Road”. Within the beautiful Central Albertan rolling landscaped I experience excitement and new skill of driving huge freezer truck, working in a walk-in freezer for eight hours in full winter gear while the outside temperature was over 28°C outside, and played with friendly Albertan farm dogs for hours on end.
As this 2017 Summer arrived this is the second time I am working weekends for at the 104st. Market located in downtown Edmonton, where Four Whistle Farm maintains a “satellite stall.” This means that I have to arrive very early in the morning to the Strathcona Market location to help set up there so we can set up downtown in a hurry as well. The downtown outside 104st. Market (actually moved indoors to Edmonton’s City Hall during the Winter) is just as exciting for me. Since it’s summer you see people outside, there are dogs, and everyone is enjoying the weather and music outside. The weather these days is not always great. I ended up working this Saturday at the market after a ten-hour night shift at my full-time job for an Inner-city non-profit in freezing weather while wearing the blanket that we use to cover the tomatoes when we don’t want them to freeze. Despite this somewhat chilly and sleepy market experience, I would not stop working for the life of me. My full-time position requires 10-hour day and night shifts --depending on the weeks -- but I am always looking how to sneak at least two shifts at the Market. My love for food and local produce just seems to grow the more time I spend around the vendors and market shoppers.
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Zocalo
Edmonton, June 15, 2017. 16°C
The Spring that decided to stay in Edmonton to take that Community Service Learning Class in my second year provided me with the opportunity to work for a non-profit as part of our class project. The agency we worked with was located in 95th St. downtown, which is part of the lower income Boyle-Macauley area. I arrived almost an hour early because I needed to take the bus and I did not want to get lost. While I waited outside the agency there was a homeless couple shooting up just a few feet away from me. Seeing people drunk, high and homeless in Mexico City had not been an uncommon sight for, but, in reality, I had always been “shielded” by the guard at my house or the car window of the car as we drove through downtown streets. Unexperienced and scared of the scene taking place just a few feet away from me, I decided to go and search for a place where I could sit and wait until my meeting was supposed to take place. Just two blocks away from the non-Profits you will find the Zocalo cafe/flower shop as well as the Italian Centre, where middle class wealth, tastes and a hint of neighborhood gentrification mix with the lingering realities of homelessness and addiction in the area. While I looked around the Italian market and later had a coffee at Zocalo, I realized the café was the kind of hidden gem my mother and I frequented in Mexico. Hence, I could not wait to bring her there in November when she would be coming for a visit to Edmonton. In Mexico “zocalo’s” are the public plazas in the centre downtown landscapes of cities and town. These urban squares have been, for centuries, venues where the public life focuses and, in Mexico City, you will find markets, Basilicas, the Cathedral and federal government’s Palace.
In Edmonton, the Zocalo is a place distinguished by a long communal table located in its greenhouse and there is a buzz of human activity in and around the café. The establishment offers small gifts and flowers for sale while colourful artisanal pottery from the state of Michoacán (pictured here, below) enriches shelve micro vistas. In tjat November, when my mom arrived to frost Edmonton, I took her to this café and her reaction was exactly what I imagined it would be, and we enjoyed our coffee (her’s chocolate espresso and mine salted chocolate) with truffles. Now, living and working full-time for the non-profit organization, this business continues to be my favourite place in Winter, especially since the warmth of the greenhouse – with all of its plants and flowers -- makes it seem like a Summer sanctuary from those occasional -30° days that frequent this Northern city. Really, the internal environment Zocalo in Winter is just a continuation of Edmonton’s livelier, welcoming and much warmer Summer. I continue to go by myself to have a coffee and their amazing salted chocolate truffle or their lemon tart (my favourite dessert). Just recently, when my family was here for a few days, my mother and I “snuck out” just to get out for afternoon coffee date alone together. We browsed around the shop for a while and settled down with our chocolates and coffees to enjoy our special time.
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