Frequently Asked Questions

Instagram @tbaynepali and our Facebook page, alongside this website. Those are the only places NEST posts, and of the three, Instagram and Facebook are where almost everything happens. This website is the steady reference. Social media is the daily news.

Our email address is tbaynepali@gmail.com. That is the only address we write from.

No. We have no account on any of them. Not one. If you come across a group, channel, page or profile on any of those platforms using the NEST name, our logo or our emblem, it is not us.

Please treat it with caution, and if you can, let us know at tbaynepali@gmail.com so that we can warn other people.

Almost certainly not, and that is perfectly fine. Unofficial groups are genuinely useful and many of us are in them. They are simply not run or moderated by NEST.

What that means in practice: we cannot vouch for what is said in them, and an announcement in one of them is not a NEST announcement until it also appears on our Instagram, our Facebook, or this website. If something matters, check it against one of those three.

Check it against @tbaynepali, our Facebook page, or this website. If it is real, it will be in one of those places.

NEST will never ask you for money by private message. We will never ask for your bank details, your card number, your SIN, or a copy of your passport, permit or other documents. If a message claiming to be NEST asks for any of that, it is not from us. Please do not reply to it, and please tell us.

No. Not in Nepal, not in Canada, not at any level, and not through any board member acting in NEST's name. NEST has no political wing, no sister organization, and no affiliation of any kind.

We are a community organization. We celebrate our festivals together, we help people who have just arrived, and we look out for one another. That is the whole of what we do.

Because our members do not all vote the same way, and they should not have to. Our people come from every part of Nepal and hold every shade of political opinion, and many of us are building lives, and votes, in Canada as well.

If NEST took a side it would stop being a place where all of them belong. A chautari was never owned by one party, any more than it belonged to one gender, one professional group or one geographic region. It belonged to everyone who passed by, and so does this.

We are sorry, but no, and please do not take it personally. NEST cannot lend its name, its emblem, its platforms, its contact list or its events to a party, a candidate or a campaign, in either country.

This applies regardless of who is asking, how good the cause is, or how well we know you. Being able to say no to everybody equally is the only thing that makes the neutrality worth anything.

You are free to hold your views and to speak your mind. You are an adult, this is a free country, and Nepal is a country where people argue about politics with great enthusiasm and always have.

NEST simply holds no view of its own, and does not host the argument. All we ask is that our gatherings stay places where somebody who disagrees with you still feels welcome to celebrate, eat and work beside you. There are children in the room, and elders, and people who arrived last week and know nobody.

Everybody. Every person of Nepali origin and their family, and friends of the community too. Whatever your caste, your ethnicity, the part of Nepal you come from, the language you grew up speaking, your religion or lack of one, your gender, your age, your ability, who you love, how long you have been in Thunder Bay, or what you earn.

We do not ask about any of it, and none of it changes your welcome. Some of us have been here twenty years and some arrived last month. You do not have to be a member and you do not have to know anybody. Come and celebrate with us, share a meal, and lend a hand if you would like to.

They have no place at NEST. We would rather say that plainly than leave it to be assumed.

We know these divisions travelled here with us, in habits of speech and in who sits with whom. We are asking, openly and without blaming anybody, that they stay outside this door. A chautari belonged to every traveller who stopped at it, and that is the standard we are trying to hold ourselves to. If you see it happening, tell us.

No. NEST celebrates festivals that carry cultural and religious meaning, Dashain, Teej and Nepali New Year, and everyone is welcome at all of them, whatever they believe or do not believe.

You are welcome to take part in the rituals, and you are just as welcome to come for the music, the company and the work of putting the day together. Nobody will ask which one you came for.

That you treat everybody there the way you would want your own family treated. That is genuinely the whole rule.

A practical version: we are a small community in a small city, and the person you disagree with tonight will be standing next to you at the next Dashain. Their children will grow up alongside yours. It is worth being kind now.

Please tell us. Write to tbaynepali@gmail.com, or speak quietly to any board member at an event. You will be listened to properly.

We should be honest about our limits. We are volunteers, not trained mediators, and we will not always handle things perfectly. But we would far rather hear about it and try than have you quietly stop coming, which is what usually happens, and which we would never even know about.

Then say so. That is allowed, and it is healthy. Every decision here is made by volunteers doing their best with limited time and incomplete information, and no decision will ever please everybody.

Bring it to us directly, at tbaynepali@gmail.com or in person, or raise it at the Annual General Meeting where the board is elected and the accounts are presented. Both of those doors are genuinely open.

The one thing we would ask is that disagreement stays about the decision and not about the person who made it. Volunteers give up their evenings for this, and nobody signs up to be spoken to unkindly in public. We can argue well and still be a family.