We Belong Together: Celebrating Quebec English Communities

Join us on May 30 from 12PM to 5PM, at Concordia’s 4th Space and online via Zoom for a celebration of Quebec’s English-speaking communities.

ELAN is partnered with six other community organizations for a multi-year project about identity and belonging funded by le Secrétariat aux relations avec les Québécois d’expression anglaise. This project allowed ELAN to create Waves of Change in 2021 and What We Choose to Remember this year.

This event will showcase the exciting projects that the 6 partner groups forming the COM-Unity Project have been working on over the past year. They explore the theme of Belonging through poignant videos, candid discussions and reflections, moving interviews with seniors, inspiring spoken word and arts-based projects and heritage initiatives and involve hundreds of English-speaking Quebecers of all ages from around the province.

How can you participate? Attend the event in person (please note that there might be restrictions on the number of people attending in person) or online by registering for the Zoom meeting or watching live on 4th Space’s YouTube channel.

You can check out the speaking schedule for the day below. Please note that times may change by +/- 5 minutes.

hourly schedule for the Celebration event

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.