After a divisive election, here’s one way forward

Listening to one another can help bridge our divides, Steven High says.

With the end of another divisive election cycle in Quebec, one of the lesser known recommendations of the Bouchard-Taylor commission into reasonable accommodation comes to mind. It called for the creation of a special fund to document the life stories of immigrants. Then, as now, heated debates around immigration usually included sweeping statements about “immigrants,” “refugees” and “pure laine” Quebecers. Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor believed if Quebecers could only get to know one another, through their life stories, we might bridge some of these social and political divides.

After all, history inhabits each of us, and ordinary people live extraordinary lives. Finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, and our shared humanity, is what oral history is all about.

It is also about listening to others unlike ourselves.

In a world of increasing polarization and hate, we are not listening enough to people of different faiths or races, gender or generation, or political beliefs. Listening across these divides is never easy, but it is needed now more than ever. In a fast-changing world, sharing stories can help regenerate the ties that bind us together as a community.

Since 2006, at Concordia University’s Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling, we have conducted several thousand interviews with Quebecers of diverse origins. These stories then became part of live theatre performances, online digital stories, graphic novels, animated and documentary film, museum exhibitions and visual art. At their best, oral history recordings open up spaces for dialogue and mutual reflection.

We saw their power recently with Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission into residential schools. The stories recorded tell us what happened in these schools, but they also revealed how this violence rippled outward through the lives of individuals, families and communities.

In our oral history archive, which is open to the public, you can listen to transnational stories of migration, genocide survival and adaptation to Quebec. You can also hear about the challenges of growing up poor and white in Pointe- Saint-Charles. There are likewise inspiring stories of community organizing and political struggle, military service and of key historical moments that have marked Quebec and Canada. Throughout these interviews, we see how power shapes and structures our lives.

Most of all, however, you learn about people’s everyday lives: what they value and how they make a difference in the lives of others. Listening to these stories often reminds me of what we share and how remarkable life itself is.

In the early 1980s, the Institut québécois de recherche sur la culture at Université Laval launched Mémoire d’une époque, which invited Quebecers to interview one another and to submit these recordings of lived lives. Thousands did so. Their stories were then aired on the radio and prizes were given. They were great stories, teaching us through first-hand knowledge about the Great Depression and two world wars.

Perhaps it is time for another societal life stories project, to interview a broad cross-section of Quebecers, across socio-economic, linguistic, religious, racial and generational lines. One can imagine a process where people engage with one another’s stories and listen, really listen. This has never been attempted on a large scale, at least not in Canada.

But collecting stories is not enough. We need to think creatively about how to activate these stories as well as to record new ones.

To that end, more than 700 oral historians from around the world will be meeting at Concordia University Oct. 10-14, the largest such gathering in North American history. We will be discussing oral history in troubling times. We’ll also explore such subjects as racism, Islamophobia, the opioid epidemic and the Syrian refugee crisis through interactive, multimedia storytelling. I, for one, will be listening for other ways we might address and then bridge these divides. Steven High is a history professor and founding member of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University.