Calgary Flames celebrating South Asian community this weekend

The Calgary Flames South Asian Celebration game is happening this Saturday when the Flames host the LA Kings. Joining me now to talk about how the South Asian culture will be recognized and represented is Jordy McLeod with Calgary Sports and Entertainment. And recap the Flames South Asian ambassador who just happens to be a Calgary artist with international acclaim. Thanks for being here, both of you. Thank you. How’s the singing going, by the way? Pretty good. Yeah. I’m jet lagged. Where are you coming back from? From India. From India. OK, very good. A big game on Saturday against the LA Kings and and a big celebration. So just maybe, Geordie, just start with what’s the night is going to entail. So it’s our first ever South Asian celebration and it is a celebration, as the name would suggest, of South Asian culture. And we’ve done something similar to the this, this type of night before with our Indigenous celebration and our Lunar New Year celebration celebrating those cultures. Ultimately, this is entirely different, following a similar blueprint where we’re trying to integrate some of the beautiful South Asian culture that exists within our city. And certainly someone like rag of has been a big part of helping shepherd us through that process. OK, we’ll get to that. I do want to get to the jerseys. We won’t be seeing these on the ice, but they will be available on Saturday. Yeah, so. So that’s correct. So we’ve got a jersey, one each produce for all of our players and you may see them walking in in them during the pregame. They won’t be on the ice, but they will be available via auction afterwards and and it’s an extremely limited edition item. There were just over 40 of these produced and ultimately they will be available in that one forum through the auction. Oh, very good. OK Raghav, what? Tell me about what it means to you. I know you’re a Flames fan and a big time Flames fan, which is great to be the South Asian ambassador to the Flames. Pretty special. I think even like 5-6 years ago we couldn’t have imagined that this kind of night would be taking place, that sports teams around the league and and particularly here in in hockey that we’d be celebrating not only our culture but what hockey means to us as South Asian immigrants, whether it’s the first generation or the second generation. You know, I grew up in a really there, I would say a very Indian home, but it didn’t detract from my Canadian experience and I think hockey was centred, centric to that. OK. And now in the break right before we came back, I was saying, can you explain the jersey to me and the artist? And you’re like when we talk about South Asia, it covers like a vast, you know, it’s big. That’s right. We’re talking India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, so many more countries, so many more cuisines and architecture, backgrounds, religions. So it’s actually explained on the Flames website. The the process that Zoe Sahota went through. She’s an incredible artist in terms of trying to make this fully representative as much as possible in one logo of what South Asian culture is and incorporating it into the Flames logo. I know a lot of work goes into these as special celebrations on top of all the work you already do, but what have you learned along this process as well Jordan? So for me, I mean it’s been a tremendous learning experience and that’s as genuine as I can be about what this has been. You know, the South Asian culture seems to me anyways, and I hope this is accurate, Ragov to be very focused on community. So giving back to community, you know, we’ve got some amazing charitable organisations involved. The Night kids play in Apna Hockey, but probably my biggest learning is how many extremely talented S Asians we have within our city. So the bunga dancers that are coming here are world renowned. The dole drummers, obviously, you know we have performers of international significance that are involved in the night. So it’s all come from Calgary and the South Asian community here. So we’re very proud of them and we’re very proud of that. For both of you, just a final word, what do you hope the fans take away from the evening Saturday? I think that these nights so far and I hope that this one on Saturday is pretty unifying. I feel like the last few years have we we’ve been discussing things we haven’t discussed previously. Some of it’s been added value, some of it has not been and I think that these nights are are completely added value from people of all cultures to understand like what hockey means to us in the the Canadian experience and what our community brings to the sport into into Canada as well. And and I guess I’m just hoping we can demonstrate a really neat integration between South Asian culture and hockey culture. Harnarayan Singh is the play by play announcer for Hockey Night in Canada. He’ll be with us that night calling the game. He’ll also be our emcee for the pregame ceremony. So lots of neat little integrations that we hope fans will enjoy. Good stuff. Are you going to the game Saturday? Oh, of course. Yeah. I’ll be there. Yeah. OK. There you go. You get. Are you going as well? I’m not going. Oh, darn. Jeez. I’ll watch on TV. Puck drops, 8:00 PM, right? Correct. It’s practically my bedtime. All right. The Calgary Flames, a South Asian celebration presented by Scotiabank again this Saturday. Flames play the LA Kings. Puck drop. 8:00 PM You can go to nhl.com/flames for ticket.