The Buddha And The Birch Tree: The Great Pine Forest Monastery And The Localization Of Vietnamese Buddhism To Canada

The Great Pine Forest Monastery was established in the Laurentian Mountains, north of Montreal, by the Union of Vietnamese Buddhist Churches in Canada in 1988. Its establishment represented, in the minds of the founders, the localization of Vietnamese Buddhism to Canadian soil. The process has, however, been a difficult one and the new acting leader of the monastery is not always optimistic that Buddhism can flourish in Canada, with particular concerns about second and third generation Vietnamese Canadians. This paper will look at the difficult navigation between tradition and adaptation that this Vietnamese Buddhist organization is undergoing, with a particular focus on the obstacles that have emerged for the development of a monastic sangha in Canada.