Readers will notice a difference in this column.
Having completed 199 interviews since Memory Lane began eight years ago, today’s column, No. 200, will be the exception.
No interview. Today’s column is about the column, with an announcement at the end of it.
Before we begin: thank you! Thank you to everyone who contributed to every one of the 199 columns that have been my privilege to write.
Now to Memory Lane.
First, statistics. Subjects live equally in North Vancouver and West Vancouver, with the occasional outlier as far away as Squamish. Male contributions number slightly higher than female, and couples make their way into the column from time to time.
Next, Memory Lane’s defining criteria.
The subject must live on the North Shore. Is length of residence a factor? Memory Lane is flexible on that, having interviewed both second and third generation North Shoreites and others who arrived more recently.
They must be a senior. At what age does one become a senior? For the convenience of the column, it’s right around 65. Personally, I believe state of mind and attitude toward life define age more accurately than chronology. I learned this from the people who populate this column.
Some of those interviewed have become centenarians over the course of time; others, inevitably, are no longer with us.
Of the several centenarians profiled, Agnes Notte, founder of Vancouver’s iconic Notte’s Bon Ton Pastry, is the eldest. She was 102 at the time of our interview in March 2009. That column holds the record for most readers’ responses, and from the farthest away, with each message containing a personal memory of Bon Ton pastries.
“Where do you find your interviews?” is something I’m commonly asked. Word of mouth, usually. Or, a candidate is proposed to this paper’s editors, prompted by an achievement, a contribution to the community or a landmark birthday. Please note it will never be possible to surprise Uncle Joe with a profile in Memory Lane on the occasion of his umpty-ninth birthday. Uncle Joe, like each of the 199 people interviewed, must agree to participate.
My method of accosting strangers with an invitation to discuss the possibility of an interview is not 100 per cent successful, though successful enough that I keep trying. By now, I can usually tell right away if a person does not wish to share their story.
However, whenever I’m told, “you don’t want to talk to me, I haven’t done anything interesting,” that is the story I want to hear, and to share.
Despite requirements of age and location, a Memory Lane column is not defined by them, nor by events in the life profiled. It’s all about the story. Each story in those 199 columns is as unique as the individual who tells them.
According to reader comments, the most popular columns include stories and memories of early days on the North Shore, told in the voices of the people who lived them.
Those voices have inspired an oral history project we’re calling West Vancouver Stories. Rupert Harrison, a founder of West Vancouver Historical Society, was the community’s first oral historian. He was interviewing longtime residents 35 years ago.
Picking up where Harrison began, the society is recording stories and memories of longtime residents, creating a collection of personal perspectives of West Vancouver’s history and development.
To paraphrase Imbert Orchard, B.C.’s pioneering oral historian, through West Vancouver Stories, “we are getting a glimpse of history not made, but being made.”
West Vancouver Stories will be a valuable resource for historians and researchers and a lasting legacy to future generations.
The goal is to include as many residents of the community as possible, and ultimately to help other organizations, individuals and families conduct their own oral histories.
From the positive response, West Vancouver Stories, 35 years in the making, is an idea that’s time has come. It’s an honour to participate in this project, as it is to write about the people of the North Shore who built the communities we enjoy today.
For information about West Vancouver Stories, get in touch with the West Vancouver Historical Society, 778-279-2235 or [email protected], or myself, project co-ordinator, at [email protected] or 778-279-2275.
Laura Anderson works with and for seniors on the North Shore. 778-279-2275 [email protected]
