This year’s Immigrant Memories of Brantford project, which takes a deep dive into Armenian culture within the city, will officially culminate into a two-day festival, held throughout downtown, on Saturday, September 28 and Sunday, September 29, 2024.
A partnership between the Brant Historical Society (BHS), Laurier Brantford, the Canadian Industrial Heritage Centre and Brant Theatre Workshops, the annual project is a public cultural, heritage and educational project that focuses on researching, sharing and celebrating the legacies of Brantford’s diverse immigrant communities.
The showcase first launched in 2019 with the Jewish Community and was followed by the Italian community in 2021, the Chinese community in 2022, and the Ukrainian community in 2023.
“We started this back in 2019 and each year the programming kind of grows. We have a steering committee of seven people and the whole thing starts by interviewing people from the community we’re looking at that year. We get their stories and we publish edited videos on them, and from those interviews, we each develop our own particular part,” said Peter Muir, Artistic Director of Brant Theatre Workshops. “The museum exhibit is one thing that we develop, then we write and develop an original play, and then there’s also a historical walk too. Before we release the program, we bring in the people that we interviewed and we have a preview early on where we read the play, we show them what kind of artifacts we’re getting, they see some videos, and then they give us feedback before we go on and make big mistakes.”
With this year’s program fully developed, Muir said that this year’s project will celebrate Brantford’s Armenian community with food, music, dance and a curated exhibit, lecture and historical walk.
The festival will kick off with a host of by-donation activities on Saturday, September 28 at the Brant Museum and Archives at 1:30 p.m. A ribbon-cutting ceremony will take place to open the “Forget Me Not” exhibit which has been curated by Dr. Christina Han, Professor of History at Laurier Brantford.
The exhibit will feature untold stories about Brantford’s Armenian community, as well as never before seen artifacts.
With the Armenian community having originally located itself in the downtown area due to the proximity to the factories at the time, Brian Moore, a BHS volunteer, has curated and will lead a walking tour through the area. The tours will be leaving the Brant Museum and Archives at 1:45 and 3:15 p.m.
For those interested in seeing Brant Theatre Workshops’ original play, “You, Me and the Armenian,” a showing will take place in the Stephen Kun Theatre inside the Laurier Academic Centre at 150 Dalhousie St. at 2:00 p.m.
The play is centered around a young Canadianized woman’s search for her Armenian roots, and a helpful ghost she meets at a dinner party who reveals information that deeply affects her.
As the opening day activities continue into the evening, an authentic Armenian buffet dinner, provided by Mississauga’s ARZ Fine Food, will take place in the lobby of Laurier’s Academic Centre at 5:00 p.m. For those interested in attending, the cost is $30.00.
Following the meal, a lecture will take place at 6:00 p.m. and afterwards, members of the Armenian community will be having a panel discussion at 6:30 p.m.
The evening will end at 7:00 p.m. inside the Stephen Kun Theatre when the Hamazkayin Erepuni Dance Ensemble perform under the creative direction of Nelly Karapetyan, an expert from Armenia. Music will be performed by The Hamazkayin Kousan Choir led by Maestro Hripsime Tovmasian with pianist Vang Hovhannisian.
With an opening day stacked with learning opportunities, Muir said none of it would be possible without such an “amazing partnership” between not only those who were interviewed, but the organizations who helped to pull it all together.
“We had a lot of help from Armenian people in Brantford, but also the Armenian people who grew up here but don’t live here now, so we’re so thankful for them,” he said. “As for the people involved in bringing this together, the four groups, we get along really well, you know? We program together and we’re all friends so it’s really a unique situation that you don’t often get. I find in many partnerships, there can often be people trying to get something else out of it or there’s an agenda, but in our case, our only agenda is to bring diversity to light in Brantford.”
Because of the work and the response the Immigrant Memories of Brantford project has done, the program has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Excellence in Community Programming.
“I think what they were looking for this year were people who were able to combine heritage aspects and diversity and that’s what we’ve been doing for the past five or so years now. We were shocked because this isn’t something that’s put on by the city, this is something we’ve done on our own. The Governor General awards are quite a big deal that means something, that means you’ve gotten national recognition so it’s quite amazing for something that was started in Brantford.”
For those who can’t make it out for opening day on Saturday, but are still interested in seeing the “Forget Me Not” exhibit, the museum will be open from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. on Sunday. And for those interested in seeing Brant Theatre Workshops’ play “You, Me and the Armenian” the second show will run on Sunday at 2:00 p.m. inside the Stephen Kun Theatre at the Laurier Academic Centre.
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
