What We Choose To Remember – Exclusive Offer for ELAN Members and ELANews Subscribers

For the past two years ELAN has partnered on a project about identity and belonging with five other community organizations: Black Community Resource Centre, LEARN, Seniors Action Quebec, Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network and Youth 4 Youth. The project is funded by le Secrétariat aux relations avec les Québécois d’expression anglaise and managed by Concordia University. ELAN’s current project is a feature-length documentary entitled: What We Choose To Remember.

Written and directed by Guy Rex Rodgers, ELAN’s production was honoured to open the Hudson Film Festival in May. ELAN is now offering its Members and ELANews Subscribers an exclusive offer to screen the film before it is publicly distributed.

Click here to access What We Choose To Remember’s webpage and a link to the film.

Left to right: David Birnbaum MNA for Darcy-McGee Vanessa Herrick , Executive Director of ELAN Guy Rodgers, Writer and Director, What We Choose to Remember David Johnston, Quebec and Nunavet Representative of the Office of the Commission of Official Languages William Floch, · Assistant Secretary, Secrétariat aux relations avec les Québécois d’expression anglaise

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Media response to What We Choose To Remember has been gratifyingly strong.

What We Choose To Remember: Compelling new documentary a “must watch” for all anglos.

Mike Cohen: The Suburban

The Quebec anglo: A new documentary portrays a reality far from the “pampered elite” myth.

Toula Drimonis: CULT MTL

It is so interesting to listen to the people who live in the different regions of Quebec. We forget there are pockets of Anglophones all across this vast province!

Andrea Howick: Global TV

What We Choose To Remember has also been covered by The Gazette, CBC, The Sherbrooke Record, City TV, The Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, CJAD, The Link, CHAI Montreal and the Ottawa Citizen.

This film about identity and belonging among English-speakers and Allophones has resonated with viewers because it reflects a lived reality that is rarely acknowledged in the media or in the official history of Quebec. ELAN is encouraging group screenings of the film and is seeking partners in communities around Quebec. If you would like to organize a screening in your community or among a group of your fiends and family, send an email to guyrexrodgers@gmail.com

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.