The largest Bubble Tea Festival in Canada has made its return to Metro Vancouver, filling Burnaby’s Swangard Stadium with colour, music, and celebration.
The event united devoted fans and curious visitors who came to have fun, and was organized by the Canadian Community Action and Restorative Empowerment Society, a non-profit organization founded in 2019.
Bubble tea is a tea-based drink that originated in Taiwan in the early 1980s. In 2020, April 30 was declared National Bubble Tea Day in Taiwan, followed by a proposal to feature a bubble tea image on the Taiwanese passport. “Now everybody thinks of bubble tea, they think of Taiwan, and we are really proud of that,” said Nelson Lam, the festival’s vice chair.
More than 100 booths lined the stadium grounds, featuring local vendors and community groups. Among them was Julia Xie from the Metro Vancouver Overseas Taiwanese Society, who was gathering signatures in support of Taiwan’s membership in the United Nations.
“We want to collect many, many people to support Taiwan to join the United Nations because China and the world are always against Taiwan, but Taiwan actually is an independent country”, Xie said.
Lam shared that preparing for the event took more than six months of hard work from volunteers and community members. The 2025 festival marked the fourth annual Bubble Tea Festival, and Lam said the inspiration behind it has always been the connection between Taiwan and Canada. He has lived in Canada for 30 years and has always drunk bubble tea. The drink has existed for a while, but it took people some time to become familiar with the variety of flavours and the history behind it, said Lam.
Looking ahead, Lam plans to expand the event across Canada. He expressed his gratitude to everyone who attended and to those who made the event possible.
– Lisa Kovtun, U Multicultural
