Honouring Asian Heritage Month at St. Mary CSS

May 12, 2025

May is Asian Heritage Month and this year’s theme is ‘Amplifying Asian Canadian Legacy’.

On Monday, May 12, 2025, students at St. Mary Catholic Secondary School in Cobourg rotated through two stations, one in the library and one out on the lawn.

Outside, there were two storytellers and drumming with students and the Indigenous Education team.

Inside, the Canadian Multicultural Inventors Museum put on an interactive display and scavenger hunt for students to learn about Asian and Indigenous inventors and inventions.

“I thought it was interesting and something we can all learn from,” said Esmée Carrabin, Grade 12 student. “It’s not what I was expecting today, I learned a lot of new things. It was very interesting and I had a lot of fun.”

“Most of these things we saw today, you can use in your day-to-day life. We don’t usually know where it comes from or where it originated. We often take it for granted,” added Bernardo Garcia, Grade 12 student. “Learning the history behind all of this is really interesting.”

The museum display started off with Executive Director Francis Jeffers asking the students if they could name ten items that were invented in Canada.

Students answered with a wide variety of inventions from basketball to insulin.

After that they checked out dozens of displays as they worked through the scavenger hunt.

“We’re celebrating diversity and STEM,” Jeffers said. “We’re doing that this month by looking at the contributions of those of Asian descent, whether that be China, India, Pakistan, and also looking at Asian people and the diaspora, those in Australia, Oceania, North and South America and the Caribbean.”

Jeffers said they bring various parts of the museum to schools across the country.

“It’s really letting people know the history of mankind, people have travelled from many different countries and settled and where they settled, they continued to contribute,” he added. “We want that wow effect because the history of innovation is inclusive and diverse but the narrative about it over the last 2,000 years hasn’t been. What we do as an organization is about bringing back the narratives about how inclusive innovation is.”

Similar events are planned later this month at Holy Cross Catholic Secondary School and St. Paul Catholic Elementary School.