In defence of the community banquet hall: This researcher makes the case for preserving an underappreciated part of suburbia

In the early research for her dissertation, Sneha Mandhan began speaking with people in the South Asian community about the use of public space in their day-to-day life.
She asked how they spent their weekdays and weekends, but then one person mentioned they grew up going to community banquet halls for events every single summer weekend, and were saddened that they couldn’t do that during the pandemic lockdowns.
“I started asking other interviewees, ‘Do you go to banquet halls?’ ” recalled Mandhan. “And pretty much everybody was like, ‘Yes, we have.’ It seems like a very ubiquitous experience, but there isn’t any research on it.”
That led Mandhan to her thesis on the use and operations of South Asian banquet halls and the role they play in the “ecosystem of ethnocultural production.” She also analyzed how these buildings are accommodated in Canadian urban planning, and how they could be threatened by legislation and policies that fail to recognize the “intangible heritage” of these venues for newcomer communities. 
Most of these banquet halls — and attached convention centres — are in suburbs, surrounded by boxy warehouses and dull industrial buildings, and sometimes even car dealerships, mechanic shops and strip malls. Their cookie-cutter exteriors may hold little esthetic value.
However, they are the source of collective memories for many newcomers beyond the South Asian communities, where cultures are celebrated and rituals are performed.
“If they were to not exist, where would these communities gather? Where will the future generations learn about their communities?” asks Mandhan, an urban planner and architect, who settled in Canada by way of India, Dubai and the United States.
“I have lived in Toronto just for six years. And personally, I feel a sense of belonging when I go to these spaces because it’s the music and the food, the vibe, everything reminds me of home. So for me, it is part of my settlement story.”
Most of these venues are in suburban employment zones, where large spaces are more affordable, and run by immigrant entrepreneurs who themselves come from the diverse South Asian diasporas. 
When Sathish Shenoy landed in Canada in 1992, there were few Konkani immigrants — an ethnolinguistic group in India — in the GTA. Festivals and celebrations were held in homes. As the community grew, they moved to school gyms.
Now, with some 400 families around, the Ontario Konkani Association has to hold the bigger events such as Diwali at community banquet halls. 
Shenoy, a former association president, says these venues, like places of worship, are important gathering places for newcomers, who may lack a support network and need a cause and a place to come together.
Newcomers need affordable venues. Not only do these South Asian banquet halls serve the community’s cultural needs, Shenoy says, the owners are from similar backgrounds, and are happy to cut deals. 
“We recognize we are Canadians to start with and this is our home,” explains the 76-year-old retired Mississauga engineer. “But there are elements of our life which are important for us and are part of our culture that we’d like to carry on … We need anything that helps us achieve this, and that’s a community banquet hall.”
Mandhan, who successfully defended her thesis last month, says the halls’ value is intangible.
“It’s hard to describe ,” says Mandhan, curator of a current photo exhibit, “Banquet and Belonging,” at the Peel Art Gallery, Museum and Archives. “It’s very much just the sense and the feeling of belonging and sort of making memories and being part of a community and gathering.”
Different waves of immigrants have brought along their own style of banquet halls. The Italians, Greeks, Hungarians, Portuguese, Ukrainians and many others have all had their go-to venues for community events, and many still do. 
Canadian-born Alessandro Tersigni, whose grandparents immigrated from Italy, says going to banquet halls was part of his upbringing, where extended family got together for life events from weddings to communions and more recently, celebration-of-life dinners after funerals. 
“These (halls) just felt like extensions of people’s houses and it just felt very natural to be there,” says the 33-year-old Richmond Hill man, who works in heritage architecture. “These banquet halls are so treasured, at least for Italian Canadians.”
Although immigration from Italy has slowed to a crawl, Tersigni says there’s no sign of decline for his community’s banquet halls, and he estimates there are at least a dozen in the GTA alone. Many of his cousins still have weddings and celebrations in these buildings. 
He says people are not necessarily drawn by the architectural designs, which usually come with the grandness of a promenade, colonnade and decor that some may characterize as “kitsch and gauche.”
“My observation is they very much have not changed and that’s why people love that,” Tersigni explains. “You get what you pay for, which is like great food, a large space, a business that caters to what you are looking for without having to explain it to them.”
He says the heritage value of banquet halls to newcomer communities is in their use and not the way they look.
“So for people like me who grew up going to them my whole life and therefore, they lend me a sense of who I am,” says Tersigni. “And that’s exactly what a Victorian architecture does to a different section of the population, right?”
Anuj Taxali, 33, a Toronto community service case worker, says he and his friends would sometimes talk about the contrast of guests who dress to the nines to these functions at banquet halls and the strip malls and broken cars surrounding them.
Last year, he attended his childhood friend’s wedding at the Pearson Convention Centre in Brampton. In the parking lot, he observed the Baraat, a procession that marks the groom’s journey to the wedding venue on a horse.
“It’s just an awesome thing to be a part of,” says Taxali, who was born in India and came to Canada when he was 6. “There is a need for this in our community. Growing up, I attended a lot of these events and now looking back, I feel like that was important, and I’m glad that these banquet halls existed to provide that space.”
And it’s something that Hosay Alcozai and Raghib Hussain — the couple running Mississauga’s Sagan Banquet Hall and Convention Centre — are extremely proud of. 
In 2014, Alcozai, whose family came from Afghanistan, married Hussain, son of Pakistani immigrant parents, at the Sagan Banquet Hall and Conference Centre. A year later, they took over the business from the retiring Indian couple who started it in 2001.
Since then, more banquet halls have popped up, serving a growing South Asian population. A WhatsApp group Hussain founded includes 150 banquet halls — large and small. Some 80 per cent of the owners are South Asian, he says. 
These banquet halls have become popular among other newcomer communities because they are reasonably priced. Sagan, which has 200 parking spots and can host 700 guests, charges on average 30 to 40 per cent less per person than some mainstream venues like hotels or convention centres.
While most of their customers used to primarily come from the Gujarati, West Indian and Muslim communities, it has become increasingly diverse.
“The mosque beside us has become more multicultural, where there is East African population,” says Alcozai, 38, who was a grade school teacher.
“Last week, we had a Somali wedding. The week before, it’s Eritrean. Prior to that, there was a Filipino one. We’re seeing a whole multicultural trend in terms of guests … and we have to expand on that to make sure we are catering to everybody.”