Joan Eyolfson Cadham
Story Telling
Anouncement
Truth or Tale - 13 week series - myths and legends of the prairies, SCN, beginning September, 2007

*Thank you cards
*TV Series Info.
*Storytelling in Vancouver
*Story Saver
*Anti-Racism Day

Story Saver

An ancient Turkish story tells of a young servant who, having taken his life savings to journey to his home village, uses his coins, instead, to buy words. His purchases keep him from error and entirely changed his fortune. Such is the power of words.

In rural Saskatchewan, we have very little historic brick or stone. We have words. As a reporter for a small town weekly newspaper, and as an oral storyteller, I am a saver or words, the local story saver.

Our communities understand the importance of words. I have been fed, petted and pampered. I have been hauled around events, introduced simply as, "Joan is here." I have truly been honoured as story-saver.

There is an ancient Ukrainian custom which is re-enacted during our local Ukrainian dance concerts. Dancers symbolically present braided bread and salt to the audience.

"Bread, the work of our hands, and salt, fruit of the earth, on beautifully embroidered cloth, is a symbol that we offer our best because we hold you in highest regard," the M.C. explains. In the same way, when I cover anniversaries or homecomings or festivals, my local communities, who hold their own story-saver in high regard, offer their best - history books, local cookbooks, mugs with wise inscriptions. I accept the gifts with as much steady grace as I can muster, and save the weeping for the drive home. It is a very great responsibility to be recognized as the story-saver.

Remember Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451, a world where books were burned and people became living books to save the stories? We aren't forced into forest hiding places to save Canada's stories. We Canadian writers can openly research our articles, write our novels, record our songs, craft our poems. Each of us, individually, and all of us, collectively, share in saving the history, the attitudes, the dreams and the nightmares of the world as we know it. We are story-savers, a vital part of the fabric that makes Canada strong and great.

Anti-Racism Day

They discovered that the father of Alec Halyk, a popular local businessman, had spent time in a Canadian concentration camp when the Canadian government declared Ukrainians "enemy aliens." Theodore was 17. Women and children were among the Ukrainian immigrants who were rounded up and imprisoned. They heard about a lady from Foam Lake who, on her first day of school, had to kneel in the corner on dried peas because she had spoken Ukrainian. Her mother had sent her to school especially to learn English.

"I would have wanted to leave school immediately," said one student.

Under Joan's direction, the senior students and their teachers were divided into groups along racial lines, a challenge in Foam Lake where most residents are multiracial, a blend of Icelandic, Ukrainian, German, Irish and English. Each group was instructed to consider living in a world where they could work, play, go to school or go to church only with people in their group. Then they were instructed to scowl and work very hard at hating everyone in all the other groups, just because they were different. This last exercise proved difficult. The concept stuck the students as so silly that most of them started to laugh.

The younger groups were divided up according to the colour of their tee shirts, all the pink students in one corner, all the orange ones in another, all the blue ones in a third. Even kindergarten students could see that dividing people up into groups by some arbitrary means was silly.

Defeating racism and unkindness by yourself is difficult, the students decided. But, if we all promise to work together, we can make a big change, they said.