The "Fork & Spoon" Diplomatic Incident

Who would have imagined it, but a diplomatic incident was touched upon over a question of cutlery. Better to say, for the way of using them.

Montreal, Canada, 2006: 7-year-old little Luc Gallardo is the son of Filipino immigrants to Canada. He is a lively and intelligent child. And like any lively and intelligent child, he grows up by imitating his role models, in this case, his parents.

Now, not many people know that Filipino etiquette requires that a spoon and fork be used at the table to eat at the same time. Pasta, rice, noodles etc are "pushed" into the mouth with both cutlery at the same time.

Well, the cafeteria monitor, Mrs Bertrand, didn’t appreciate this cultural variant. On more than one occasion, she made Luc sit alone, saying that the child ate "like a pig" and "in a disgusting way". In addition to having scolded the child for not having washed his hands, asking, obviously ironically, if in his country it was not customary to wash hands before sitting at the table.

The protests of the Filipino communities in Canada, together with those of the media in the homeland, were not long in coming. Protest sit-ins also took place outside the Canadian embassy in Manila.

The defence theory was that the child "filled his mouth with food" to make his classmates laugh, and was scolded (and name-called) for this very reason, and not for his use of cutlery. The court endorsed this thesis, condemning the cafeteria monitor only for the phrase "don't people of your Country wash their hands before having lunch?".

The Gallardos, however, appealed to the Quebec Court of Human Rights, obtaining a conviction from Mrs Betrand, and from the school for objective responsibility in not favouring interculturalism.

Justice was done for little Luc. And so we note that there are many ways to use cutlery.

But to store and display cutlery, especially in a cafeteria, there are the Inox Bim cutlery trays. In addition to other useful accessories!