How Thai Forest Buddhism Came to British Columbia—Video

From the description:

How did the austere Thai Forest Buddhism win a foothold on the laid-back west coast of Canada? This is a recording of a talk given at SFU Vancouver on October 4, 2019: “Thai Forest Buddhism Enters the British Columbian Forest: Building Birken Monastery in the 1990s”

In April 1994, the Venerable Sona (ne Tom West), a Coquitlam, BC-born-and-bred Buddhist monk from the austere and orthodox Thai Forest Tradition of Theravada Buddhism, travelled to a complex of rundown shacks on the road between Mount Currie and D’Arcy in the Birkenhead River valley near Pemberton, BC. There, he succeeded in establishing a foothold of the Thai Forest tradition, the first initiated by a westerner in North America.

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