Year in Review: What We Choose to Remember

The Waves of Change docu-series was a 200-year (1820-2020) oral history of Quebec’s English-speaking communities recorded on the 50th anniversary of the FLQ crisis. What We Choose to Remember is the feature-length documentary that grew out of this project. This May, What We Choose to Remember premiered at the Hudson Film Festival to much critical acclaim.

Left to right: David Birmbaum (MNA D’Arcy-McGee), Vanessa Herrick (ELAN), Guy Rex Rodgers (Director), David Johnston (Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages), William Floch (Secrétariat aux relations avec les Québécois d’expression anglaise) at the Hudson Film Festival

ELAN’s feature length documentary What We Choose to Remember began a tour in Knowlton that continued to Barachois and Gaspé in the Gaspésie, Rouyn-Noranda in Abitibi-Temiscamingue, Quebec City and Chateauguay, Ormstown and Pincourt in Montétégie. Director Guy Rex Rodgers attended all screenings and facilitated post-screening conversations with audiences about identity and belonging in Quebec.

*August 2022. What We Choose to Remember screening in Chateauguay.*

In September, ELAN’s newest documentary about identity and belonging in Quebec, Waves of Change: Reimagining Quebec, was broadcast on CBC television, The documentary is now available on CBC GEM. You can now stream the documentary on CBC Gem.

*CBC Promotion for Waves of Change: Reimagining Quebec.*

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.