The Plan: Pin Seniors’ Memories to Digital Maps
Imagine walking through your neighbourhood and being able to pull back the curtains of time as you go. What do people remember from decades ago? What family stories do they have to tell? What used to be where that condo now stands? What did newcomers experience years ago, and have things changed?
These are the questions we want to answer with Mapping our Memories. Thanks to a 2024-25 Government of Canada New Horizon for Seniors (NHSP) contribution, we are now able to continue working on the project.
It’s ambitious we know, but here’s the plan: Build a team to explore memories and historical details about our neighbourhoods and make them easily accessible by linking the collected stories to a digital map. To start, we will be focusing mainly on the west end of Toronto – Roncesvalles and High Park, Parkdale, Swansea, the Junction and Weston — but we will post good stories from across the city!
We are grateful to have software developer Michael Lenaghan building our website. And over the next eight months, we plan to hold free video-making and writing workshops for 55-plus. The workshops will cover subjects such as the elements of a good story, interview techniques, video-making and memoir writing. The cost: Share your stories for Mapping our Memories.
For our video programs, you will be using your smart phones and the simplest editing platforms, such as iMovie and Clipchamp. We want you to gain skills that will allow you to continue making your own videos and, we hope, more videos for Mapping our Memories. For the writing programs, we will coach you on what makes a good story and how, through detail, make it come alive.
The Mapping our Memories project was inspired by Lois Broad, who turned 97 in 2024. The popularity of her video, Growing up in the Junction, showed us how interested people are in what life used to be like in our neighbourhoods. Lois is a gifted story teller. Watch her video here.
We have just completed two video-making course, one at Humber Valley United Church and another at our studio. Thanks go to Anne Pietropaolo helping with the arrangements; Chris Higgins for teaching and coaching; Madelyn Miyashita for sharing her editing expertise on a PC computer.
Join us for our next program at Humbercrest United Church, 16 Baby Point Rd., at Jane and Annette Sts.
A New Free Video-Making Workshop!
STARTS WEDNESDAY, Oct. 23, 1:00-3:00 PM FOR SIX WEEKS AT HUMBERCREST UNITED CHURCH, 16 Baby Point Rd., at Jane and Annette Sts.
Once again, we are offering a Mapping our Memories video-making program for 55-plus. We will be using smartphones and laptops, equipment you most likely have at hand to put together short videos. Here’s an opportunity The workshop fee: Make a one- to two-minute video, which we hope you’ll be willing to share for our Mapping our Memories project. During the workshops, we will cover simple techniques for recording and editing video, as well as exploring online sources for archival photos, address records and more. Abandon your fear of new technology! There will be lots of one-on-one help. We will get those videos done and posted!
Email us if you can join us. If you are unable to attend this session and would like to take the course, let us know.
Past Workshops
MEMOIR WRITING– STARTING THURSDAY, JULY 18, 6:30-8:30 pm AT THE STUDIO!
As part of our Mapping our Memories project, we will be offering a memoir writing course with author and professor emerita Janice Kulyk Keefer. Janice wrote her own family memoir, Honey and Ashes, an engrossing book that explores her family’s stories in Ukraine and Toronto, set in a larger social and historical context. She will coach us on what makes a good narrative, the importance of detail and the use of research to add dimension to our stories. The workshop fee: Contribute at least one story to Mapping our Memories, our ambitious project to create and map a collective memory of our community by linking seniors’ stories to a digital map. The six-week program will combine in-person meetings and online coaching – flexible to accommodate summer schedules. Let’s start with a meeting at an evening get-together, Thursday, July 18, from 6:30pm to 8:30 pm at the studio. Interested? Please email us! Tell us your summer time restrictions as well.
VIDEO MAKING — STARTS WEDNESDAY, JULY 17, 1:00-3:00 PM FOR SEVEN WEEKS AT THE STUDIO!
Once again, we are offering a Mapping our Memories video-making program for 55-plus. We will be using smartphones and laptops, equipment you most likely have at hand to put together short videos. The workshop fee: Make a one- to three-minute video, which we can use for our Mapping our Memories project. During the workshops, we will cover simple techniques for recording and editing video, as well as exploring online sources for archival photos, address records and more. Abandon your fear of new technology! There will be lots of one-on-one help. We will get those videos done and posted! The place: at Back Lane Studios in Roncesvalles. Proposed dates: Seven weeks starting Wednesday, July 17, 1:00-3:00 pm.
Email us if you can join us; let us know your summer time restrictions. If you are unable to attend this session and would like to take the course in the fall or next winter, let us know.
During the pandemic, Toronto Star journalist Cathy Dunphy led our two writing workshops for the Mapping our Memories project on Zoom.
And our interviewers and writers have come up with some terrific stories. For example:
- The Ruth Frocks story: It’s a long way from a Siberian gulag to Ruth Frocks, a women’s clothing store at 1637 Queen St. W. But Adam Eckardt’s children tell how their father traversed that distance of more than 15,000 kilometres and how he and his wife Phyllis built an extraordinarily successful business at that Parkdale location.
- The Sinking of the Athabascan: Sue Ferguson’s dad was a stoker on the destroyer HMCS Haida and played an important role in the rescue of some crew members from the torpedoed Athabascan during World War II. Sue’s family lived on Beresford in Bloor West.
- Alminta Dawson: A talented musician, Alminta sang in public for the first time at a British Methodist Episcopal Church in Windsor, where her father was pastor, at age 3, but her singing career really got its start at the Lansdowne Tavern in the mid-1950s at the NE corner of Dundas St. when she was in her mid-30s after she had been widowed. Alminta bought a house at 208 Lansdowne Ave. Alminta’s granddaughter Adrienne Dawson also told us about the first time she saw Alminta perform in public — at the now closed Eton Tavern. Watch her story on video.
Questions? Call us at 647-313-1654 or email info@backlanestudios.ca.
Mapping our Memories is funded in part by the Government of Canada’s New Horizons for Seniors Program.
About our Instructor
Cathy Dunphy brings a wealth of experience to the project.
A staff writer for more than 25 years at the Toronto Star, she is also the author of a biography of Henry Morgentaler, two young adult fiction books based on the popular Degrassi High TV show, screenplays for television and a four-part mystery series for radio.
Cathy has taught at Ryerson and worked with seniors to produce a podcast series called “I Was Here. at the Chang School of Continuing Education. Do you have any questions about her course?
Email catherinedunphy@rogers.com
Researching your ‘hood online
Jessica Algie, from the City of Toronto Archives, presented free Zoom workshops on how to find out about Toronto buildings and neighbourhoods online. She discussed the resources available, and using the building where Back Lane Studios is located as an example, she showed what she managed to find from available sources.
To find links to resources Jessica mentioned in her presentation, click here.
To watch her presentation on YouTube, click here.