On oral history and the presence of the past

Posted by Jennifer Bonnell

When I first moved to Toronto from British Columbia ten years ago, I took up a job with the Multicultural History Society of Ontario, coordinating an oral history project on the Scarborough community of Agincourt. Conducted in partnership with the Scarborough Historical Museum, the project took on a life of its own, interviews yielding more interviews as our network in the community expanded. In the end we conducted over 50 interviews with long-established residents and newer arrivals to the community from places as far flung as Sri Lanka, Egypt, Estonia, and Hong Kong. We transcribed every one of them (unbelievably, now, looking back). The project resulted in a travelling exhibition that toured schools, shopping malls, and civic and cultural institutions throughout Scarborough. It provided a meeting place for widely diverse experiences of a place changed almost beyond recognition, from a cross-roads farming community to a polyglot suburb, in the space of fifty years. The interviews generated a lot of nostalgia for this lost place, and, predictably, some bitterness about the changes that had occurred: the loss of rich farmland to suburban tract housing and shopping centres, the multiplicity of languages and lifeways that replaced what was familiar. They also, however, provided poignant commentary on the place that Agincourt had become: the opportunities for connection across cultures that it supported, the misunderstandings that persisted, and the experiences—some joyful, some horrific—that people carried with them to this place. Represented as they were in the exhibition through text excerpts, images and audio clips, these divergent experiences drew people in. People read, they lingered, and most of all they listened.

“What might it mean to live our lives as if the lives of others truly mattered?”

Posted by Cynthia Wallace-Casey

“What might it mean to live our lives as if the lives of others truly mattered”? This is the question that Roger Simon poses in his discourse on the pedagogical significance of remembrance-learning. His response: if the lives of others truly matter, then we should accept the memories of others as counsel and learn from them.  Memory and remembrance is the framework by which individuals have the ability to re-experience the past through the lives of others. Although highly transient in nature, memory and remembrance are the triggers that allow us to make connections between the past, present and future.