Ross is from the South Coast of Australia and moved to Canada in 2015. He says he chose to move to Canada for the natural beauty and inclusiveness. Ross became a citizen mid-April of 2019 and says the biggest change for him has been “the joy of anonymity, and being part of the brilliance of pure multiculturalism. I feel free and at home.”
Ross is an avid user of Canoo. In addition to visiting venues, he also regularly takes advantage of the free tickets offered to Canoo members by email for concerts and performances. “[Canoo] is so splendid,” says Ross, “I have seen my first opera, AGO, ROM and a few smaller galleries. I have just attended a music recital that I wouldn’t really have seen without the pass. My experience of the pass allows me to be more engaged with the events I would not have been aware of.”
Ross firmly believes in the importance of arts and culture. “It has always been my belief that you have to know [the] past to understand the now and the future of a culture,” he explains, “So I have found galleries and museums key to travel and my world education. The galleries with their amazing staff always make for a totally enjoyable experience and a great memory. Without art/cultural heritage of any kind, we are nothing at all; we would just exist and go through the motions. The arts/places have to be held up as a mirror of the past, and [they] now help point to the future.”
When asked if he had any additional comments, Ross said, “I just want to thank all the faceless people that help us become Canadians, the people that volunteer at all the events and the people at Canoo. Most of all, remembering my first feelings when I arrived in Canada, [I believe] anything is possible here. Thank you, Canada.”
A few weeks after she took part in 6 Degrees Berlin 2020, the 6 Degrees team sat down with Åsa Wikforss to talk more about dis- and misinformation in the context of the COVID-19 crisis, its impact on inclusion, and how we can collectively counter false narratives and polarization.
Wikforss is a Swedish professor of philosophy who does research at the intersection of philosophy of mind, language, and epistemology. With the publication of her popular book, Alternative Facts: On Knowledge and its Enemies (not yet released in English), she has become a leading public defender of reason and truth against enemies of knowledge. In 2019, she was awarded a large interdisciplinary research program, Knowledge Resistance: Causes, Consequences and Cures, funded by the Swedish Foundation for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
6 Degrees: What do you think is a key misunderstanding in the way we talk about or define disinformation?
ÅW: Well, first to distinguish between dis- and mis information. Usually disinformation is more harmful because it has a propaganda function to it, it’s targeted — it’s meant to have political effects, and manipulate emotion in a way that misinformation doesn’t. Because disinformation is intentional, unlike misinformation, and it’s designed to foster certain beliefs, it’s typically more harmful.
Certainly when it comes to immigration, the political purpose is quite clear: to create a split between “them” and “us”, and drive that kind of nationalistic message forward.
The other thing about disinformation that is worth paying attention to is that disinformation need not mean that things that are said are false. If we define disinformation simply as information that’s designed to cause false beliefs — which I think is a good definition — then you can disinform by saying true things. You can make a selection of things that fit your narrative, and you exclude all the others. When it comes to immigration in Sweden, for example, there’s been a very concerted effort to create a false narrative. As soon as there’s something bad that happens that relates to immigration, they trumpet it out over and over again. They use gang violence — which is a societal problem in Sweden — and put a lot of focus on the role of [asylum seekers] to paint a picture of Sweden on the verge of collapse.
They pick their facts really carefully, then say things that are actually true, but the overarching message is false. That works quite well. But it’s trickier than something where you explicitly say what’s false.
How do you fact check things like this that aren’t false?
That’s exactly why this type of disinformation is so much more dangerous — you can’t just stamp it false. The answer to that kind of disinformation is good journalism. You fill in the missing facts, you provide the complexity and nuance that is missing to give the full picture. The problem is that that requires serious journalism that no one has time or money for anymore. It also isn’t as exciting; it’s hard to get lots of clicks doing that kind of journalism. This is a dangerous type of disinformation precisely because it’s hard to fact check, and because as human beings we love narrative, we love stories. So we get sucked into it.
Does that attraction to narrative connect to our cognitive biases? How does that cause us to fall for or spread misinformation?
You can see the link between narratives and confirmation bias, for example. If you’re caught in this narrative that Sweden is about to collapse because of immigration, you will be inclined to believe false statements that fit that narrative — fake news about immigrants will fit nicely with that, confirming the picture you already have. Moreover, you’ll be very observant of bad things that have to do with immigration that you might not have seen otherwise. You’re on the lookout for evidence that confirms this narrative you’ve already accepted. Narrative provides a structure for your experiences and the information that comes to you and shapes it in a way that interacts with our biases.
Do you think becoming more aware of our cognitive biases helps us counteract that?
If you think of confirmation bias it’s an interesting one. This bias is an unconscious psychological mechanism that we don’t have all that much power over. Everyone has it. Researchers have it; they want to confirm their theory. So why does research work? It works because of the institution. The institution is set up so that we examine each other, we question each other. It’s set up to counteract biases and error. So, it’s the social dimension of properly set-up institutions that allow for critical reasoning in a group that makes us overcome the biases. We can counteract the biases we have in a group.
That speaks to the importance of institutions, and their responsibility.
Institutions are key to democratic society, but also key to science. It’s key to all the things that we value, because as individuals, we’re pretty lost! Even if we’re super smart and diligent. If you lock up a super smart scientist, they’ll come up with some crazy theories, because there’s not enough feedback from other people.
So, what are some of the strategies that institutions can adopt to counter dis- or misinformation?
It’s not as simple as just going out and telling people how things are. We should instead go out and talk about the institution, and how it works.
In general, people don’t know how institutions work, and how they come to conclusions. In science, truth wins out over time. We have theories, we make mistakes, but things tend to correct themselves, because we have the institution. I think the same is true for journalism. What’s the difference between a serious journalistic institution and a propaganda platform, other than intentions? It’s how they work. How they have fact checkers, editors, internal review. They should make clear how they work to explain why they should be trusted.
What you’re talking about is transparency. Would that have the same effect in government and civil society?
I think transparency is key there as well. If we look at COVID-19, every government has different ways of doing things. In Sweden, we have politicians and an expert health authority. Politicians cannot make a decision that is not recommended by the health authority. They can’t decide to close all the schools until the health authority says so. That’s a kind of transparency that made me trust political decisions much more. So one could think that transparency, when it comes to political institutions, could have a similar function. If you want to build trust then that’s exactly the thing to do.
What about individual action to counter mis- and disinformation? Especially in the context of COVID-19.
When it comes to this kind of thing, go to the very established sources, where there is an institution backing up the information that is coming out. Don’t look up “Paul in Wherever” and his platform, or whatever you manage to find. With COVID, all the world’s scientists are working on it. And when there is real news, it will be known. Stick to the serious and established sources, and accept uncertainty.. Don’t trade uncertainty for some certainty in what’s false.
Do you see the spread of mis- and disinformation as being a threat to civil society and civic participation?
Sure. That’s its goal much of the time. There’s a certain type of political propaganda where the goal is to set one group against another. That’s what the Russians are doing in Sweden, and also in the U.S. They want to maximize polarization. They find these wedge issues where there’s potential for polarization, like immigration, and drive disinformation in such a way that one side perceives the other side as ugly or crazy. That’s one thing that disinformation has succeeded in: giving a skewed and horrible picture of the other side. And, of course, that will affect civil society. It comes out on social media, but it can’t be contained there. It has effects in real life, too.
In that context then, how do we balance the need to correct misinformation and misunderstandings with the need to bring people together through shared values to reduce polarization?
It depends on the context. But in society we need to address it. We know this from research on feminism and microaggression, if you let it pass in public, you’re condoning it. So it’s not really an option. The challenge then is how do you respond to it without putting the other person so much on the defense that it will just backfire. If you look at the research on fact resistance, it’s important to remember that it’s about emotion, not an information deficit. A similar thing holds for hateful comments, racial slurs, or things like that. In the public context one needs to speak up, but do it in such a way that the other person doesn’t feel threatened or shamed, because that’s not going to help either. And that’s a tricky balance!
And there’s the question of what you do online. If you should call it out, or if it’s “feeding the trolls”.
It’s a harder one online — it can be feeding the trolls. It also depends on the context, but can often not have the effect that you would like, that this person and all his friends will change their minds. That’s not going to happen.
One thing is Mina Dennert and the #iamhere movement. She’s lined up all of these people on Facebook who go in and, instead of trying to put down the hateful people, support the person who is subjected to hate. That might be the most efficient way to get the hateful people to stop, too. Make them think, “is this really the side I want to be on?” It works really well, and it’s very moving to see.
And in real life one can do something similar. “We’re here, and we’re not going to let this pass.”
It will be interesting to see after COVID-19, maybe this will counteract polarization. In Sweden, I can already feel it a bit, people coming together. I just saw some statistics now that the Swedish Nationalist Populist Party — a fascist party, basically — they’ve been as big as the Social Democrats lately, but in the last week their support has gone down and the Social Democrats have gone up.
You can feel there’s a move towards the feeling of “us” again. We must come together and help each other. So maybe this kind of a crisis will counteract polarization.
For more on misinformation, disinformation, and countering false narratives, check out the ICC’s Citizen Resilience Project.
As of today, the Sherbrooke Museum of Nature and Science has partnered with Canoo to welcome new Canadian citizens into their space with free admission.
Canoo is a mobile app that helps new Canadian citizens celebrate their citizenship by providing free admission to over 1400 museums, science centres, art galleries, parks, and historic sites across Canada.
The Sherbrooke Museum of Nature and Science is a buzz of activities of all kinds: exhibitions, multi-sensory shows, educational activities, talks, and corporate events. Its mission is : to inspire, amaze, and make it possible for the public to discover nature, science, and the richness of collections from our natural heritage. Learn more on their website.
Canoo members in Sherbrooke, QC, and the surrounding area, check your app to learn more about the Sherbrooke Museum of Nature and Science and to visit!
To find more places to visit near you, be sure to enable location services on the Canoo app. Learn more about the app on the Canoo Help Centre.
On the 172nd anniversary of democracy in Canada, we spoke to John Ralston Saul, co-chair of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, and author of Extraordinary Canadians: Louis Hippolyte Lafontaine and Robert Baldwin, about why March 11 should be a national holiday, what lessons we can learn from LaFontaine and Baldwin, and more.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Why is March 11 the anniversary of Canadian Democracy?
On March 11, 1848, the Canadas and Nova Scotia tricked the British into giving them responsible government. It sounds boring, but what it really means is that parliament has the power, instead of the imperial authority. Whoever has the votes in parliament decides who the governor general can call to be prime minister and form the government. So, from the moment that parliament has the power over who governs and how the money is spent, you have democracy and virtual independence. You can’t be a colony when you control those two pieces. So, March 11 is the beginning of democracy in Canada and of Canada becoming an independent country. And it is the beginning of the end of the British Empire because that model is then slowly, slowly followed by other countries, beginning with New Zealand and Australia.
So, Canada was the first out of the British Empire to have responsible government or democracy?
We’re actually the first out of any of the European empires. Canadians understate all of this. The world was controlled by the English, French, Italian, Spanish, German and American empires and the first country to talk its way out was Canada. Before that, we had only the Americans, who fought their way out, which was the old-fashioned way LaFontaine and Baldwin used political methods to accomplish something which the British governing elite opposed.
Can you talk a bit about LaFontaine and Baldwin and what they mean to this day?
Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin were the visionaries and leaders of the government – the Great Ministry, it was called – that came to power on this day 172 years ago.
What’s wonderful is they are two really odd guys. They didn’t meet until they were in their thirties. They came from two different cities, two different languages, two different religions. Suddenly a few years after the failed rebellion in 1837, they were brought together. I don’t know what they thought of each other but they quickly realized that they had to do something. And they were real fighters by temperament.
In fact, LaFontaine, when he was a young man, had been a boxer — an intellectual and a boxer. He started political life as Louis-Joseph Papineau’s main bodyguard. And Baldwin was a strange, romantic figure.
From 1840 to 1848, they fought, fought, fought. Everything but physical violence on their side. It was quite dangerous, I mean their lives were at risk many times. They often had to flee Orange Order club-wielding mobs. They were cool and very calm and courageous. At last, they won the election of January 1848. By 1849 the anti-democratic forces attempted what were in effect counter coups. In 1849, when the Orange Order and the anti-democratic elites burned down the parliament buildings and tried to assassinate them, they refused to send the soldiers in to open fire. They said — we’re just going to wait this out, we’re going to try and keep order as calmly as possible. And so, they set the model for a very stern, but non-violent approach to government.
By the time they got to power in 1848, they were already not that well. It had been such a hard fight. Three years later when they left, they were exhausted. Ready to die. They were in their fifties and a few years later they were dead. It killed them, doing this really killed them.
Do you think that March 11 is a day that should be celebrated more than it currently is?
Yes, absolutely.
Until the worship of John Macdonald began in the 1960s — really an attempt to be like the United States and to have this single heroic figure, which, of course, couldn’t help but backfire — until then, LaFontaine and Baldwin had always been major figures in the story of Canada. They were talked and written about endlessly. With the LaFontaine-Baldwin Lecture and all the work that we’re doing at the ICC, we’re coming back to that idea that Canada is not a place with one leader or one hero — it isn’t about heroes, it’s about ideas, strategies — inclusion, the public good, egalitarianism. Egalitarianism was central to the 1848 idea of Canada – endlessly invoked.
March 11 is an incredibly important date because it sets a pattern for the country at its best. Remember that 1848 was the year when most of the European countries went through what they called the democratic spring of Europe. They overthrew their undemocratic governments in France, Italy, the Austro-Hungarian empire, et cetera. Nova Scotia and Canada were part of that revolutionary change. But within about six to nine months, all those governments had been overthrown by the old anti-democratic forces. The only places where democracy survived were the Canadas and Nova Scotia. It’s really quite remarkable. They survived by being incredibly tough and by refusing to let violence run the show. So, I think it should be celebrated enormously. We must try to understand this success.
It’s worth remembering that, just before they formed the government on March 11, [LaFontaine and Baldwin] got the legislature to pass its first pro-democracy bill, which was a bill setting up an immigration policy for Canada. So, the very first act of a democratic parliament in Canada was to pass an immigration bill. It’s pretty amazing.
What do you think could be done to celebrate March 11 more?
I think it should be an official day in Canada.
It should be a day on which people and politicians, citizens, and schools talk about where they feel our democracy should go. Because LaFontaine and Baldwin were all about that: you can only have democracy through strategies for improving society. That’s how they did it. It wasn’t nationalism; it was improving society and the public good. I think their names — but above all their approach — what they taught us about how to build democracy in Canada, should be in schools. There should be continual discussions about how we can improve our societies, just as they did in 1848. Parliament and the legislatures should mark the day.
Do you think the conversation about how we can improve societies is missing in the public dialogue?
Yes. So much of journalism is about power. Who is winning, who is losing. And about very specific issues. Fine, but there is very little stepping back and saying, what do we need to do in order to create a more inclusive, a more just society. A lot of the work that we are trying to do at the ICC is about that, in terms of new Canadian citizens, in terms of immigration, in terms of citizenship. And I think that there really has to be enormous emphasis on the role of ideas and working out where we can go. Because if you don’t have a big idea of where we should be going, it all ends up in directionless infighting.
What role do you think everyday citizens could have in not only promoting LaFontaine and Baldwin, but also in having this conversation about where we can go as a society?
That’s why I’m always talking about citizenship. here are three or four things that a citizen can do, should do. One of them is really to be talking with families, with friends, in social clubs, classrooms, hockey arenas, workplaces, talking about where should the country be going. Why do we have homelessness, poverty? What should jobs look like. What policies are needed on Indigenous questions. These things need to be thought of, not just in terms of the policies of the day, but they have to be thought of in terms of what do we really want to do. And people can talk about that in many places. Most of us participate in all sort of social, family, religious, professional gatherings. But we don’t organize enough as citizens to talk with each other about where we think the country should be going. It’s not just a thing for political parties. It’s something for each one of us.
What can we learn from that initial government – the Great Ministry – in the context of today’s increasingly polarized political landscape?
The fascinating thing is that it was, of course, polarized then. It was the pro-democratic forces against the anti-democratic forces. That’s how we ended up with a burnt down parliament. But in the end, most of the anti-democratic forces changed sides. A large number of the people who had opposed LaFontaine and Baldwin ended up adopting most of their ideas, their ideas about democracy, their ideas about bilingualism, their ideas about inclusion, their ideas about social policy. They were largely adopted. We are living today on foundations built by LaFontaine, Baldwin, and their allies. What is fascinating is that out of that great reform party — which was called the Reform Party and the Great Ministry — came both the Liberal party and the Conservative Party. Effectively, the Reform Party split in two and most moderates joined one or the other. Why? Because they understood — they both accepted the idea — that they had to advance the common good or they couldn’t expect citizens to support them.
We have to get away from the idea that competition in politics is only about opposition. It may be about different approaches, but it has to be about improving and strengthening the public good. And I think that is one of the great messages that came out of [the Great Ministry]. The lesson is that there is something called the common good and it has to be served. And we must remain centred on that. If children are not eating properly, if newcomers are marginalized, if people are homeless, if treaty negotiations stretch on for decades…we have to talk about these real issues and about what makes dignity and citizenship possible.
The day Canada became a democracy cannot help but be a defining moment in our history. One hundred and seventy-two years ago, on March 11th Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine was summoned by the Governor General, Lord Elgin, to form a new government. Why? Because the grand coalition of Upper and Lower Canadian reformers had won a clear majority in the election of 1848. For the first time, in any part of the British Empire, it became clear that the people and not the imperial authorities would decide who was to form the government.
March 11, 1848 is one of the most important dates in Canadian history. It marks the beginning of what we might call modern Canada. Another way of putting it is that March 11 marks the beginning of Responsible Government in Canada — the now axiomatic idea that governance is properly carried out by elected citizen representatives and not colonial powers. It was a defining moment for representative democracy in Canada, marking a paradigm shift in its modes of governance, and laying the legal foundations for a society based on inclusion and egalitarianism.
In March 1848, a Reform government – it was called The Great Ministry – led by Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin came into power in the United Province of Canada (the territories now known as Ontario and Quebec). During its three years in power, the Reform government laid the legal foundations for egalitarianism, instated a system of public education, and insisted on a non-violent approach to politics. (When protesters burnt down the Parliament buildings in Montreal, the government ordered the police forces not to open fire on the crowds.) It was, as author and ICC co-founder John Ralston Saul has noted, an “astonishingly atypical” beginning for modern democracy in Canada, given the political discord in Europe and the United States at the time. Inclusion, restraint, debate, representation, egalitarianism — the precepts of good governance as we understand it today, forged by an unlikely heroic duo of Francophone Catholic and Anglophone Protestant.
“The first law passed by The Great Ministry created a Canadian immigration policy designed to protect immigrants. This is the foundation of our refugee, immigration and citizenship policies today,” says John Ralston Saul, who wrote a biography on the two leaders. “The example of LaFontaine and Baldwin is that democracy in Canada only works if we are willing to leap forward with important ideas and policies that strengthen egalitarianism and the public good.”
In 2000, John Ralston Saul founded the LaFontaine-Baldwin Lecture, an annual lecture given by a prominent public intellectual. The lecture honours the legacy of LaFontaine and Baldwin, gathering Canadians for debate and dialogue in the spirit of the public good. Past speakers have included George Erasmus, Shawn A-in-chut Atleo, His Highness the Aga Khan, Naomi Klein, Naheed Nenshi, and Robert Lepage, Michael Sandel, and Sue Gardner.
Visit 6 Degrees for more information about past LaFontaine-Baldwin Lecture series.
Meet Canoo member Susan Shaw from Calgary.
Susan says that she chose to move to Canada because she wanted a country with “a future – and snow!” She loves the space, the mountains, the people, and the feeling of safety that Canada provides her.
Her favourite place to visit is Kananaskis Country, Alberta. This Alberta Parks location is full of beautiful views of the mountains and Susan spent many nights in the park during a road trip from Alberta to B.C. with her children.
Susan believes that cultural places “teach people who didn’t grow up being Canadian what the history of Canada is, how [Canada] reflects the diversity of all its citizens, from the original inhabitants through to the modern immigrants.”
Susan says she’s loved using Canoo to visit cultural venues. “I have enjoyed searching new places to visit that I would not [have] known about if I hadn’t had Canoo,” she says, “The app is so easy to use and I have [had] positive reactions from people when I show the Canoo [app]; people congratulate and welcome me as a new Canadian.”
“No matter where my birth country is,” Susan says, “first and foremost, [I am] Canadian.”
Ananya Ohri, artistic director of the Home Made Visible Project (HMV)
Home Made Visible (HMV) is a nationwide archival project by the Regent Park Film Festival, Toronto’s longest running free community film festival. HMV highlights the histories of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC). Under the artistic direction of Ananya Ohri, HMV collected home movies from BIPOC communities across Canada to digitize and archive them for free. It also brought together Indigenous and visible minority artists to explore the connections between our vast and varied communities. The commissioned artworks and digitized home movies were presented through a series of public screenings across Canada. HMV ended in 2019 but the archival material produced remains accessible through the York University Libraries.
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your relationship to film and archives?
I was born in India and came to Canada when I was 10 years old. When my grandmother finally moved to Canada to spend the last years of her life with family, she could not bring the trunk full of photographs and documents that were sitting in her apartment in New Delhi. In many ways, this feels like a huge loss. And I also know that there are other ways for me to connect with that history. I have living relatives I can speak to, I can visit sites, and there are digital copies of some of the contents of that trunk somewhere. I consider this a privilege. What happens, though, when you do not have ways to connect with your past? What happens when others piece together what your history looked like? And shape ideas of where you come from, what and who you can call your own, or not? This has been a reality for many communities who have experienced (and continue to experience) displacement, enslavement, and colonization. People in these communities have worked hard to reach back and find connections with the past that bring integrity, pride, anchoring, and resonance with who they are and who they are becoming.
Archives, and personal and community archives in particular, are important to me because they give a glimpse into histories that have been overlooked, marginalized, and misrepresented. They hold nuance and complexity that has been glossed over or simplified. They demonstrate that our individual histories are important to us AND the wider communities we belong to. They are a reminder to honour our own stories, especially when we feel like there is no point or the task seems too difficult.
While I have time on my side, I should get to tracing the contents of that trunk. They give insight into the forces of history that have shaped me and offer up a slice of history that belongs to an entire peoples.
Tell us how the Home Made Visible Project (HMV) came about:
HMV came about because home movies by BIPOC communities were not part of our institutional archives and because, unless they were digitized, the tapes and reels on which these home movies did exist would soon be falling apart.
The project also came about because through our work at the Regent Park Film Festival, I have come to recognize the immense importance of representing joy in BIPOC communities. And home movies are full of joy. So we got to work asking people if they had home movies, we then digitized them for free and added a copy of a portion of each to the York University archives. There is a repository of BIPOC joyful instances through this archive, which I hope will inspire new stories, images, and representations that reinforce our capacity to be joyfully complex people.
What were your initial thoughts on the power of archives to shape who we become? And how did they evolve as you embarked on the HMV project?
I wanted to preserve home movies and put together an archive that would encourage new kind of stories – joyful stories – about BIPOC communities, which can often get lost among the more challenging stories that get told.
Through the three years of the project, I gained better appreciation for how long it takes an archive to come together and how much longer it can take for it to reach people. After digitizing 300 films and archiving excerpts from each donor family’s collection, we need to create ways that artists, academics, and curious minds will not only come across this archive but create something from it for a wider audience to engage with. This archive has just been around for less than 2 years – it has ways to go, not only in terms of the material it can preserve and collect, but also the people it can reach, before it can make a big impact on greater representation of joy in BIPOC stories.
How are home movies different from other archival materials, and what can they do for representation?
Archival documents have traditionally been official records (like ownership documents) or anthropological records (like documentation and photographs taken by explorers). BIPOC communities, in all their diversity, have often been excluded from the official records, historically disenfranchised to be landowners, etc. Or been misrepresented or left out by someone else in the anthropological records. Home movies are a type of historic where at least one person from their own community captured a moment that they wanted to capture, in a way they wanted to capture it. It is a record of self-preservation and self-representation.
BIPOC communities have fought to tell their stories. And most of these, given the history of Canada, are very challenging. With the addition of documentation of joy to the archive, it is my hope that the stories we tell will increase in complexity, where we are not continually an issue to be reflected upon, but whole humans, with a range of experiences.
Could you speak more about your interest in exploring how our diverse histories converge?
Black, Indigenous and People of Colour communities, BIPOC, is such a vast term, bringing together identities based on the similarities they share with each other in their relationship with whiteness and white supremacy. But how do these various identities, their experiences, their beliefs, their histories intersect with one another? And how can these intersections better lead us to a shared liberation? These are the questions that spark my interest in exploring how our diverse histories converge on this land called Canada. In particular, I want to cultivate a context where Black and POC artists feel supported in extending their engagement beyond ideas of migration, displacement, and diaspora, to also exploring their connections to Indigenous peoples and colonization.
What was the response to the artworks and selected clips?
There was a range of responses: marveling at new information, to simply being dazzled by the joy. My hope is that the pieces sparked people’s interest in personal archiving of their own. In some cases, especially in the workshops, I could see that.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
The Regent Park Film Festival is Toronto’s longest running free community film festival, dedicated to showcasing local and international independent works relevant to people from all walks of life, with a focus on inviting those from low income and public housing communities. The films presented break stereotypes and show that no one place or person has just one story.
Meet Canoo member Shameka and her family.
As a new Canadian citizen, Shameka believes that active citizenship is an important practice. “Active citizenship means to me getting involved in your community no matter how small the activity may be,” explains Shameka. “[For example,] sitting on a parent council at your kids school or volunteering to go in and speak about your career for career day or donating to your local food bank. It doesn’t have to be something elaborate; it just has to be something that has an impact on others and making a difference in their lives.”
“The best place I’ve visited using Canoo was Telus Spark Science Centre,” says Shameka, “We visited on a Statutory Holiday and it was a bit crowded but my kids had an awesome time… for once my 5 year old didn’t complain that he was bored and actually didn’t want to leave! It felt so good watching my kids explore the centre and ask questions about how things worked, [even] competing with each other in operating the simple machines. I have never seen them that engaged before. Now we have a membership for the centre. Canoo afforded my family the opportunity to visit some places that we would not have thought about visiting and we totally enjoyed the experience!”
Shameka thinks that cultural places “help people to have a deeper appreciation and understanding of different cultures and this leads to persons feeling more connected and comfortable in society.”
As of today, The Market Gallery has partnered with Canoo to welcome new Canadian citizens into their space with free admission.
Canoo is a mobile app that helps new Canadian citizens celebrate their citizenship by providing free admission to over 1400 museums, science centres, art galleries, parks, and historic sites across Canada.
The Market Gallery animates the second floor of the South St. Lawrence Market, which encloses all that remains of Toronto’s original 19th-century Front Street City Hall council chamber, operating from 1845-1899. The historic site presents a variety of changing exhibits related to the art, culture and history of Toronto.
Canoo members in Toronto and the surrounding area, check your app to learn more about The Market Gallery and to visit! To find more places to visit near you, be sure to enable location services on the Canoo app. Learn more about the app on the Canoo Help Centre.
Meet Canoo member Christine Samonte.
Christine immigrated to Canada over 10 years ago, and now lives in the Calgary area. She received her Canadian citizenship in June 2019. Christine chose to move to Canada in part because “it’s one of the most beautiful countries in the world!”
Christine’s favourite city in Canada is Vancouver, but her favourite place in the country is Banff National Park, and she visits the park regularly. “I always love Banff because of its amazing sceneries,” she says.
She believes that Canoo helps to play a role in building social inclusion as it allows her to “enjoy and witness the different cultures” in Canada. “What I love most about Canada is its diversity of people and culture,” she says.
