Hey NL Students! We want your family stories about the #Covid19 pandemic!

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Covid-19 NL Oral History Project with Heritage NL and The Rooms

We want your family stories about what is happening in Newfoundland and Labrador during the Covid-19 pandemic! Here are some sample questions to get you started on your home oral history interview. You can answer these yourself, or sit down with a family member and interview them. Don’t forget to start your interview by spelling out your full name, and including the date of the interview.   You can record your interview in any format (audio or video) on your smartphone or digital device, and email it to covid19@heritagenl.ca.  If it is a large file, you can use the free www.wetransfer.com website to send it to the same email address, or post it on YouTube and send us the link.

All submissions welcome, including songs, recitations, poetry, or music!

Sample Questions

• Can you describe the community where you live?
• When did you first learn about the coronavirus? What were your initial reactions?
• How did your community respond to the virus? What closures, restrictions, or safeguards were put in place?
• Describe any events you witnessed that express your or your community’s response to the virus.
• How are you personally responding to the virus? What has changed in your daily routine?
• How has your family been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic?
• How are you staying in touch with family and friends?
• What will you remember most about this time in our lives?
• Who is in your Double Bubble, and why?

Feel free to make up your own questions!

What will happen to my audio/video file?

Once you contact us, we will ask you to fill out this brief, confidential consent form so that we can add your story to a permanent collection on Memorial University’s Digital Archives Initiative, where it can be seen and accessed for educational and non-commercial use only, and where it may be used as part of a future physical or online exhibit at The Rooms about the Covid-19 pandemic. Your story will become part of the historical record! If at some point you want your story taken down from the website, we can always remove your records from the archive.

• Download this page as a pdf here. 

For more information, contact:

Dale Jarvis, Heritage NL  dale@heritagenl.ca
@dalejarvis on Twitter   www.hfnl.ca 

“Folklore Lives Here!” - A storytelling night in Bay Roberts

Do you remember the spot where teenagers went for their first kiss, where fairies marched, or the rock haunted by the woman in white? Have you collected water from brooks or picked berries from a marsh? What was the best place for playing hockey?

A group of Memorial University folklore students, along with the Heritage Foundation of NL and the town of Bay Roberts, wants to know!

“We are looking for people’s memories about local places, neighbourhoods, swimming holes, skating ponds, and old paths,” says the foundation’s folklorist, Dale Jarvis.

Jarvis, and a group of Memorial University folklore students, will be hosting “Folklore Lives Here” at the SUF Lodge, Bay Roberts, on Thursday, September 14th, 2017 at 7:00pm.

The event is an informal story sharing session for students to meet local residents and seniors, where people can gather, have a cup of tea, and share memories of growing up in Bay Roberts.

The folklore students are part of Memorial University Folklore Department’s Graduate Field School. Students will be living, studying, and researching in the area for three weeks, where they will receive training in folklore interviews, and will work together as a team to document the folklife of Bay Roberts.

The information gathered will be used by the students to create a booklet about the folklore and historic places and neighbourhoods of Bay Roberts.

Come for a cup of tea, share a memory or two about a special place in Bay Roberts. If you have old photos of your favourite place, bring them along!

For more information please contact Dale Jarvis with the Heritage Foundation toll free at 1-888-739-1892 ext. 2 or email ich@heritagefoundation.ca.

“Folklore Lives Here!” - A storytelling night in Bay Roberts
SUF Lodge, Patterson Street, Bay Roberts
Thursday, September 14th, 2017 at 7:00pm.

Stick out your thumb: hitching for stories from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia

Andrea McGuire, a folklore graduate student at Memorial University, is currently seeking interviews with past and present hitchhikers in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. She is collecting stories from people who used to hitchhike, people who hitchhike in rural communities, people who hitchhike nationally/internationally, and drivers who pick up hitchhikers. Each interview will take approximately one hour, and will be drawn on for Andrea’s master’s thesis. Do you have a hitchhiking story to share? Get in touch with Andrea by phone at 709-771-2216, or via email at c33alm@mun.ca. She would love to hear from you!

The proposal for this research has been reviewed by the Interdisciplinary Committee on Ethics in Human Research and found to be in compliance with Memorial University’s ethics policy. If you have ethical concerns about the research, such as the way you have been treated or your rights as a participant, you may contact the Chairperson of the ICEHR at icehr@mun.ca or by telephone at 709-864-2861.

Finding Local Folklore at Ascension Collegiate, Bay Roberts

The ICH office, and the Bay Robert Cultural Foundation, are starting a project to document folk beliefs, superstitions, charms, and cures in the Bay Roberts area. We'll be doing a series of recorded interviews with locals, and we've also started a project with Level I students in Ms Welsh's English class at Ascension Collegiate.

We visited the school earlier this week, talking about local folklore and supernatural belief. We talked with the students about doing primary research, and going out and asking questions. To help them out, we developed a one-page questionnaire, for them to take home and use while interviewing parents, family members, friends, or neighbours.

We are heading back to Ascension on Friday morning to see what the students collected, and to help them write up some of their folklore findings.

Here are the questions the students are using:

1). Is there a place in your community that people say is haunted? ....a haunted cemetery, a haunted walkway, a haunted cliff or rock, a house, or other building? What are the ghostly stories connected to these places? 

2). When you were growing up, were there any places you were told not to go because the fairies would get you? Where was this and what are the stories you were told? 

3). What are the local stories about shipwrecks? ...buried treasures? What about ghost or weather lights seen on the water?

4). Are there any people who are believed to be witches in the community? Why do people think this? What kind of powers does this person have? 

5). Have you ever had a visit from the Old Hag while you were sleeping? What happened and do you believe that this experience was real or just a dream?

6). Do you know of any special charms, superstitions, cures or remedies that are used in your community?

If you know of a story like this from the Bay Roberts area, you can email lisa@heritagefoundation.ca.

Teachers, librarians or museums: you can download a pdf of these questions right here.

Looking for practical experience in public sector folklore work?

Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) is an important new development in the heritage world. Our living traditions, intangible ideas, customs and knowledge are important for cultural identity and community sustainability, and the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador is on the cutting edge of ICH work.

We are looking for folklore and ethnomusicology graduate students who are interested in getting involved on a volunteer level and gaining practical public sector experience of the sort that future employers love. The Provincial ICH Advisory Committee has spaces on three sub-committees who will be working to promote, enhance and further the provincial strategy on ICH.

There are three ICH sub-committees in need of volunteers:

Inventory and Documentation – working on projects to collect, record and conserve fieldwork material.

Transmission and Celebration – working on projects to commemorate and promote ICH and local tradition-bearers.

Training – working to develop practical, hands-on folklore and fieldwork training workshops.

If you’d be interested in helping out with one of these groups, you can call Dale Jarvis at 739-1892 ext 2, or email ich@heritagefoundation.ca and say which group you’d like to get involved with.

Culture Corner - The Folklore of Harbour Breton

Mr Doug Wells, of Harbour Breton, is a board member of the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador. Following our board meeting last week, he sent me a series of articles on local culture.

Wells writes, "I had my students to write on local cultural and historical events, etc. With a folklore background, I also encouraged students to write articles on folklore related practices. The attached articles are folklore/folklife related and represent Harbour Breton and some nearby resettled communities. Over the years of teaching Cultural Heritage 1200, students wrote approximately 150 stories. The stories were worth so much towards the student's course evaluation. They were also submitted to our local paper as well, the Coaster. Our class's section of the paper was called Culture Corner and was quite popular with locals, especially with seniors."

With his permission, I've placed the scans of the original articles online.

From curing warts to local legends, the articles give a wonderful introduction to the local folklore of Harbour Breton and area.

10th Annual “Sharing our Cultures” Celebrates the Province’s Cultural Diversity

About 600 Newfoundland and Labrador students in rural schools will experience several world cultures as they visit a multicultural and educational fair at Marystown Central High School in Marystown.

On May 7 and 8, students in Grades 4 to 12 will participate in the 10th annual Sharing our Cultures. This event offers intercultural exchange between students from rural schools and students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds residing in St. John’s. Marystown Central High School has partnered with Sharing Our Cultures to bring this unique multicultural experience to the Burin Peninsula.

The public is invited to the official launch of Sharing our Cultures in Marystown, from 7:00 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursday, May 7 at The Gymnasium of Marystown Central High School. Admission is free. On Friday, May 8, from 9:00 a.m. to 2:15 p.m. the event is open only to the media and to students and teachers who have registered.

The theme of this year’s event is “Music, Dance, and Stories.” About 30 new Canadian, immigrant, refugee, and international students have created cultural exhibits to bring alive the history, culture, language, dance and music of 12 countries. Performers include Bosnian, African, and Colombian traditional dancers and audience participation in Bamboo dancing.

Visiting students will engage in bilingual cultural activities and interact with host students who will share their culture in music, dance, and stories. By visiting government and community information booths, students will learn about Canadian citizenship and identity, multiculturalism, immigration, resettlement, and integration.

This project is sponsored by the Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers’ Association and supported by the federal Departments of Canadian Heritage and Citizenship and Immigration Canada; the provincial Department of Education; the Office of Immigration and Multiculturalism (Human Resources, Labour and Employment); the Eastern School District of Newfoundland and Labrador; CBC Radio-Canada, and École des Grands-Vents.

For more information please contact:
Lloydetta Quaicoe, Executive Director (709) 727-2372
or
Marystown School Administration(709) 279-2313