Director's Message - December, 2020

Guy Rodgers with Rob Lutes filming for We’re All In This Together SENIORS Project
Photo by: Bobbi-Jo Hart

This has been a grindingly tough year, and few of us will be unhappy to see 2020 vanish in the rear-view mirror. Vaccines will become available in the New Year and we will emerge from the parallel, on-line universe we have inhabited since March, back into the real world of performances and audiences: happily, cautiously, gratefully. This holiday season will be restrained, but it is worth the collective sacrifice of small gatherings to ensure that 2021 is a better and safer year.

ELAN has been busy with many activities and projects as you’ll see in this edition of ELANews. We are particularly pleased to launch our ‘We’re All In This Together’ project in collaboration with Seniors Action Quebec. Seniors have been particularly hard hit by Covid-19 and ELAN is happy to create entertaining content for them while isolation continues.

On a similar positive note, I invite you all to join ELAN staff and board on December 14 for a holiday schmoozer where we can share stories about the highs and lows of 2020, things we have learned, people who helped or inspired us, and things we hope never to encounter again! It will be a Zoom schmoozer, but we will make it as welcoming and enjoyable as is virtually possible.

Wishing you a healthy holiday season.

Guy Rodgers

Executive Director

Land Acknowledgement

ELAN is an official minority language organization within a country that recognizes two languages as official. ELAN is located in Tiohtià:ke, the original name for Montreal in Kanien’kéha, the language of the Mohawk—also known as Mooniyang, which is the Anishinaabeg name given to the city by the Algonquin. While we are based in this city, our projects have also taken place in many regions across Quebec.

We acknowledge the colonial origin of English and French in Canada, and recognize that both languages benefit from official status throughout the land. The province that we know as Quebec is an amalgamation of the traditional territories of the Innu and Inuit nations, Algonquian nations, as well as the Mohawk nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Kanien’kéha and Anishinaabemowin are but two of the original languages of this province; Atikamekw, Cree, Inuktitut, and Innu-aimun are also among the many Indigenous languages spoken across Quebec as majority languages, all well before French and English.

ELAN acknowledges the important work being done by First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples to revive the traditional languages of these territories, and their advocacy for the official status of Indigenous languages.

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Land Acknowledgement