More likely than not, unless we make efforts to the contrary, we will pass away before our stories are caught in a meaningful way.
All that will remain of our time on earth is a wisp in the form of an elaborate rumour or two, a few footprints to be lost in an errant wind, and perhaps a couple of moments from a court appearance recorded by the local newspaper. These days, your Facebook profile might also serve as a sort of legacy, but that page will only exist as long as the Goliath companyís content is available ñ and bigger companies have fallen.
We at the Advocate have written in the past about the lost moments of the Athabasca region. We wrote that some of the townís early history went up in smoke during the fire of 1913 fire, and there are no surviving newspapers from the 1920s that covered the area. Even the graveyard has been moved, a couple of bodies left in the original space, the names and records lost. Add to that the significant effect that residential schools had on the histories of local First Nations and MÈtis families, and you have a recipe for losing the past.
Enter the Athabasca Area Seniors Memory Project.
Here and now, we have a small but committed crew of people ñ including some journalism students from Edwin Parr Composite ñ who are interested in preserving the individual histories from our town.
Interviewing seniors and members of the community, the project is trying to help to ensure that threads between generations are not cut.
Though the interviews result in an audio file for each individual to share with their family, with permission those files are landing in our archives, part of a permanent chronicle of the region and a piece of the narrative of our time.
It is an honourable endeavour, though one that usually does not get much recognition in the here and now. Historians often have a kind of thankless job; people do not often realize the kind of energy and self-reflection it takes to record your own memoir, either. Moreover, those who will really appreciate the efforts behind this venture have likely not been born yet.
And so, in the meantime, for their sakes, thank you for working to build the story of Athabasca.
