If you visit APL this February and March, you might notice some wonderful new additions to our space! APL is hosting the immigrantstory.ca Exhibition. The exhibition features story panels and incredible photos, all from the lives of immigrants who came to Canada from across the world. The exhibition and immigrantstory.ca platform were created by Sholom Wargon, a local Ontarian with a passion for sharing the immigrant experience with others.
Keep on reading for Sholom's guest blog post, The more threads, the richer the tapestry, and see the exhibit at APL until March 31st.
The more threads, the richer the tapestry
by Sholom Wargon
“We may have come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now”—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Dr. King really “got it.” He understood that our commonality of experience is a lot more important than our regional differences.
At the same time, those differences are fascinating. The more threads, the richer the tapestry. In Canada, we take pride in celebrating our diversity.
If you live in or near the Greater Toronto area, home to more than 200 countries and cultures, your life has been greatly enriched by the diversity of the Canadian tapestry. Mine certainly has; no fewer than 12 countries have contributed to the ethnocultural diversity of my own family, and that’s just counting close relatives. My late wife Erminia Tonelli immigrated to Canada from Italy at age 13. It was in her honour that I created immigrantstory.ca, so that immigrants to Canada from the world over could share their stories.
We hope you’ll take the opportunity to visit our current exhibition at the Aurora Public Library and Town Square. Many stories on immigrantstory.ca are displayed there in larger-than-life format, along with many other panels not featured on the website.
Immigrantstory.ca is a literary platform. To date 38 different authors, several of them award-winning, have contributed stories about immigrants from 30 different countries and counting. In fully embracing the Canadian cultural mosaic, we bridge communities by highlighting commonality of experience: the same kind referenced by Dr. King.
Our collection of narratives grows organically as people share their stories with us. If we haven’t yet done a story about someone from your country of origin, here’s an easy way to fix that: contact us and offer to share your story.
The fix may be easy, but our process isn’t. We spend 30 to 40 hours on every narrative. We want to give each story the attention to detail it deserves.
If you think your story is “nothing special”, you’re wrong. Give me five minutes of your time and I’ll prove it to you. Better yet, before you give me that five minutes, give yourself five minutes. Think about your experience. I defy you to go even one minute before something funny, sad, or dramatic springs to mind.
You’re unique. So is your experience. We hope you’ll share it with us. If you give us the opportunity to capture that humour, that pathos, and that drama, we’ll be honoured to bring it to life.
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