Nick Noorani Website

Mainstream effort often tokenistic
Every evening this week, Darshan Sahota will roll down College Street in Toronto’s Little Italy, and take an elevator five storeys above ground to a sleek, state-of-the-art radio studio and settle in for a 3 1/2-hour broadcast that reaches a potential audience of hundreds of thousands.
When the on-air light flashes red, Sahota’s listeners will tune in to hear a broad-ranging variety show, with interviews, music and news. But if you’re reading about it here, in this newspaper, for the first time, you’re probably not exactly the target audience Sahota has in mind.
Sahota’s long-running program is entirely in Hindi and Urdu, beamed with clockwork-like consistency to a loyal community of listeners from the Indian, Pakistani, Afghan and Bangladeshi communities. He began the show in 1972, on CHW AM, and migrated over to CHIN-FM radio on College Street in 1992.
Sahota, in other words, is a veteran of this country’s ethnic media, a wide-ranging field that now comprises more than 120 radio and television shows, 536 publications, and more than 100 languages
Jun. 24, 2006. 09:43 AM
MURRAY WHYTE
ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER
Toronto Star

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Chinese immigrants Anne Lee and her husband, Frank (not their real names), speak with tears in their eyes. “We left our parents behind and came to Canada because we were told that Canada respects our wish to bring our parents here.” It is now five years since they applied to sponsor their parents — in that time, Anne’s mother has passed away.

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