Cheers for the Melting Pot

I'm in New York right now, having arrived this afternoon for a Tourism Canada event. There are Francophone Canadians and Anglophone Canadians, and the entertainment during the opening reception was Tanya Tagaq, a throat singer from Nunavut whose primal voice and haunting songs evoke the tundra. Nunavut is a largely Inuit jurisdiction was created in 1999 from Canada's Northwest Territories -- dividing one vast sparsely populated region into two still vast, sparsely populated regions. Together with the Yukon Territory, their total populations well under 100,000. But, as Dave Barry often writes, I digress.

The opening event, whose theme was the Northern Lights, was a lovely melding of three Canadian cultures under the glittering chandeliers of the Waldorf-Astoria's Starlight Roof, a wonderful hotel in the most crowded city in the Western Hemisphere. What a contrast between Nunavut and New York. But I'm still digressing. Tomorrow, I will plunge into the abundant travel opportunities provided by our neighbor to the north, but today, in just a brief period, I again was energized by New York's role as the greatest melting pot on the planet.

I deplaned at crowded LaGuardia Airport , hearing snippets of English, Spanish and other languages -- though LGA is the most domestic, least international of New York's three major airports. Two friends who were on my flight and I got into the cab line. The dispatcher was an African-American. The cab diver was from South Asia. The bellman who unloaded our luggage from the trunk sounded Jamaican. The front desk person who checked me had a Hungarian accent.

One of my friends and I decided to run out for a bite to eat. We both had work to do and wanted only something quick to bring back to the hotel. We only had to cross the street to find cheap, fast steet food. At the corner of St. Bartholomew's Church, an Byzantine-style Anglican church known for its ecumenical outreach, was a halal food cart run by two Arabs -- if the name is accurate, according to Moslem dietary law. The menu board (right) listed gyros, falafel, kofta, hot dogs with sauerkraut or chili, Italian sausages and potato knishes. That first hour off the plane is what makes New York such a multi-cultural melting pot. It's one of the things I love most about the city.