Samra Habib’s book, We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir, is screaming at you. The cover is bright, present, bold, and certainly intriguing, and the words inside are not dissimilar. Taking the reader through her personal childhood journey, from her story of migration to the messy, beautiful, complicated experiences that have grounded who she is today, one almost feels as if they’ve picked up a diary.
When the book begins, we are in Pakistan. We meet Habib’s family; we are familiarized with her likes and dislikes, what her parents reward her for and what she is punished for, her frustrations, her passions, and her future goals and dreams. Habib lays a foundation that allows readers to navigate her personal development with a deeper understanding of her origins and influences. Again, it feels as if one is reading young Habib’s diary — the emotions feel raw and present, as opposed to remembered and reflective.
It should be said, however, to the readers who are looking for another narrative on the “Good Immigrant”, someone who escaped their backward country for the promise of a free life in Canada and is inherently grateful: you will be disappointed. Of course, Habib is grateful, as she reflects later on, but she does not ever paint Pakistan as a place she wanted to escape from. She thinks back on that time of her life rather fondly.
Habib’s childhood in Canada is for the most part quite difficult, painful, and lonely. She deals with racism and discrimination, both directed at her and her family. She bears witness to the difficulties her family has in adjusting, in finding work, in paying bills, and in finding community. Bearing witness to your parents’ struggles, not only financially and socially, but also in being targets of discrimination and racism, can have lasting effects on a child, especially one who is still acclimating to a new language, culture, and lifestyle.
As someone who immigrated to Canada as a child with her parents, I could relate to Habib’s story. Seeing how my mother’s accent was received, how strangers in our building reacted to the smell of our food, or the stares my parents would get in public just for speaking in Farsi to one another, taught me what was and was not accepted in Canadian culture. It pushed me to lose my accent, to refuse my mother’s incredible home cooked lunches, and to never speak a lick of Farsi around an English-speaker. Painfully, I internalized a shame for my own ethnicity that I’m still learning to undo.
Habib goes through a similar journey. To avoid ridicule, she makes compromises until she feels safe enough to explore more authentic parts of herself, like her unique sense of fashion (in part inspired by her Pakistani roots) when she’s older. Habib’s entire journey is about learning, unlearning, and relearning. From a young age, she learns what is important to her family, her cultural roots and traditions, and then her Canadian peers. But as she grows older, she starts to deconstruct these truths and to question them for herself and sometimes even for others. In her unlearning, there’s confusion and sadness, but also excitement and growth. She falls in and out of love, in messy ways that feel contradictory to her growth. It’s at times frustrating, but mostly wildly relatable. She commits herself to new mediums of expression, like photography, and dedicates her energy and her intellect to storytelling through this platform. She questions and explores her sexuality, not just in terms of queerness, but in what it means to be attached to another human both physically and mentally. This is her unlearning — being open and vulnerable, trying new things, questioning norms.
Relearning is where we leave Habib. She discovers queer spaces and communities in Toronto, and she finds ways to share that with her family. She finds solace, connection, and above all, inspiration from other queer South Asian people and other queer Muslims. These new discoveries not only create a sense of belonging and even purpose for Habib, but further ignites her desire for visibility; she wants these stories to be shared, to be heard, and to be cemented in text, photography, video, music, etc.
We Have Always Been Here serves as written proof, not for all, but for those who can hold the text and see themselves in it. As a first-generation immigrant, so many parts of the book made me want to scream: I wanted to yell Habib’s words from the rooftops, I wanted to tell her stories to other people, because they were my stories. They were my complicated feelings and my messy experiences. Habib went through the painful process of learning, unlearning, relearning, and then shared that experience with us. This does not mean, however, that her story stands for all of us. It simply provides a foundation, a sense of community, and an urgency for others who can read this memoir and see themselves. We Have Always Been Here is proof of an experience and narrative that is otherwise at its best manipulated, controlled and diluted, and at its worst nonexistent. It is a narrative of existence, of being together, and therefore of “being” with just a bit more ease.
This book review was written by Niki Mohrdar, program assistant for Canoo.
It has been a challenging time for the arts and culture sector. The volume of cancellations and closures has left many organizations, on the one hand, quickly responding to the sudden changes, and on the other, seriously wondering what their future looks like. The challenges are ongoing as museums, galleries, festivals, and theatres continue to grapple with difficult decisions every day. With this in mind, it is the second question we wish to dedicate this newsletter edition to, as a respite from the hardship and as a reminder of what lies ahead.
Without diverting attention from the more immediate challenges, we have to wonder what the longer-term implications of these adjustments and, in some cases, dramatic changes will be. How will this crisis transform the arts and culture sector?
We have asked different leaders from arts and culture to share their thoughts on what they see as possible paths forward. Their responses offer a diversity of perspectives and point at different opportunities for action. Here’s what they have to say
It’s too early to say exactly what the sector will look like on the other side. We may be on the verge of a paradigm shift in the way museums operate.
During the pandemic, we have seen some museums pivot quickly, providing virtually accessible resources. These contributions reinforce the value of museums and the critical role they can and must play in society.
That being said, museums risk not being able to fulfill their much-needed role. Several have closed their doors, exhibits have been cancelled, collections lack the constant care normally afforded to them, and many workers have been laid off. We worry about the hardest hit, the many small museums.
We appreciate the government’s relief efforts, but they are not enough to ensure the sector’s viability. So we are advocating for a dedicated museum relief fund to support lost revenues and an emergency development fund for digital activities. We are also maintaining pressure to update the 30 year-old National Museum Policy. If funding was at the appropriate levels and if what the policy covers was modernized, museums could ostensibly be better poised to weather the situation.
There’s no question the museum sector will need to adapt to a new reality. I remain hopeful that with adequate support and modernized policies, the future of our sector is bright.
Right now, many of us are in rapid response mode. But, for those of us who have a bit of capacity, I hope we have some time to dream about the future. Here’s an article I wrote about how to slow down, take stock, and reimagine my role in building a more equitable future.
The question I’m holding is – how do we want to transform ourselves in the long term because of this crisis? What new futures do we want to create? If we acknowledge that “normal” was not fully equitable, how can we change that?
Because of these questions, I’m spending a lot of time visioning. Especially for cultural organizations, I think it’s meaningful to envision how we want to reopen and who we want to be our partners in making that happen.
If you have five minutes, I invite you to write a journal entry imagining that bright day, and how the world might be different. It might help you figure out what you most want to do next.
COVID-19 is forcing the music industry as a whole to take a step back and reevaluate how musicians and audiences interact with each other.
So much of what drives music revenue is built around the gathering of human bodies, in large quantities, into contained spaces. And both medical and music industry professionals agree, we likely won’t be able to do that again for quite some time.
Perhaps here is where change can happen and it can be driven by each and every one of us.
In the past few years, the music industry was scrambling to find ways to remain relevant. Record labels were becoming artist management companies and large concert promoters owned all the commercial radio. Now that we’re in lockdown, we still see how relevant music remains while the gatekeepers put in place to profit from art become less and less relevant.
As music consumers, we have the power to engage and support our favourite artists directly through digital portals created by and for artists. We have the collective power to support locally and to help emerging and mid-career artists flourish both financially and creatively.
And artists need to not just adapt to the technology but expand the constraints of these platforms through creative and unorthodox thinking. Musicians must become well-rounded creatives, capable of not just writing and performing songs, but delivering eye-catching visuals and theatrical experiences built on multi-disciplinary methods and aesthetics.
A return to directly empowering local, grassroots artistic communities is a tangible step towards an equitable and inclusive arts economy.
COVID-19 has already been transformative for many within the arts and culture sector. From the fear of layoffs to anticipated budgetary cuts over the next while, the arts and culture sector faces an uncertain path forward.
But within this uncertainty, lies opportunity.
What has become apparent within the COVID-10 crisis is the importance of human connection within a context that is, necessarily, limiting our ability to connect in person. In this context, the arts and culture sector can play a key role in generating and maintaining human connection.
As such, COVID-19 may indeed act as a catalyst for a reinvigorated commitment on the part of cultural institutions to fostering empathy, understanding and connection, and doing so in innovative ways. For instance, encouraging institutions to experiment with new, remote ways to connect and to share stories is just one way in which the focus of our work has already changed; as this crisis develops, it may also engender new innovations in delivery and communication for the sector as a whole.
New formats for delivery and communication to foster human connection may also necessitate other changes within the sector, beyond the immediate. For instance, a greater focus on digital engagement and the retention of specialists in the field of online design and delivery may be required. In addition, an understanding of the barriers to access that many face in a digital world reveals deep structural inequity and will surely require institutions and professionals to find innovative ways to enhance inclusion and participation.We can all agree that this is a terrible time for humanity. COVID-19 endangers lives, weakens the vulnerable and creates collective anxiety, particularly notable in the arts sector, which now finds itself disoriented. These are violent times in many ways, but they could lay the ground for profound transformation and place meaning at the centre of our existence and our organizations.
Upon leaving the camp in 1946, the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl wrote about the importance of meaning as a true source of resilience. According to him, the question wasn’t what do I expect from life? but rather what does life expect from me? Considering what we could give over what we couldn’t get as a way to create meaning. This can help us ask ourselves some good questions in relation to our cultural institutions:
What do we want to cultivate?
Whom and what do we want to care for, individually and collectively?
Why do performing arts? For what purpose? Why?
Where are the needs?
How can we help today?
Let’s use our creativity and collective intelligence to answer these questions. Let’s use the limitations as a basis for inventiveness. Let’s put aside the past and the future that cause us so much anxiety and focus on how to honour the living right now. This is certainly the best position from which to build trust with our communities and become part of a new system.
One of the main challenges museums will face after COVID-19 is having to balance the pressing need to collect and preserve the testimonies of those who have been most affected, with the obligation to adhere to strong ethical principles such as the minimization of harm and respect for human dignity.
Many of these communities, which have been historically excluded or misrepresented in many of our museums, have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. Museums have a responsibility to ensure that the stories of the underrepresented won’t be lost, overlooked, exploited or replaced by privileging only heroic narratives.
I believe and I hope that after COVID-19, museums will be pushed to be more self-reflective and work more ethically when researching, collecting, archiving, interpreting and exhibiting the stories of historically marginalized communities.
It is our responsibility as museum professionals to bring these discussions to light so that the museum sector can emerge stronger and in solidarity with the communities we intend to serve.
The global creative community has taken a remarkable leadership role in organizing, adapting and responding to the health emergency. This timely and proactive reaction has raised visibility of the sector, establishing it as a fundamental and necessary part of contemporary life. I am confident that this recognition will help strengthen public budgets for the sector and will lead to greater sustainability for the community.
A large number of cultural activities have been virtually reprogrammed using digital technologies, immediately multiplying their audiences and global outreach. These creative endeavours have helped to alleviate the psychological stress of millions of people who are in isolation, preventing the spread of the virus.
This renewed presence of cultural goods and services enriches the cultural diversity within the digital landscape. Most importantly, it reminds us that on the other side of the pandemic culture and art await us in a physical space; a place where the desires, illusions and dreams of humanity coincide globally. The day we get to attend our first concert after these adverse times, we will experience it as if it was our first time. We will never forget the value of culture again.
*These responses have been edited for clarity and length
Ross is from the South Coast of Australia and moved to Canada in 2015. He says he chose to move to Canada for the natural beauty and inclusiveness. Ross became a citizen mid-April of 2019 and says the biggest change for him has been “the joy of anonymity, and being part of the brilliance of pure multiculturalism. I feel free and at home.”
Ross is an avid user of Canoo. In addition to visiting venues, he also regularly takes advantage of the free tickets offered to Canoo members by email for concerts and performances. “[Canoo] is so splendid,” says Ross, “I have seen my first opera, AGO, ROM and a few smaller galleries. I have just attended a music recital that I wouldn’t really have seen without the pass. My experience of the pass allows me to be more engaged with the events I would not have been aware of.”
Ross firmly believes in the importance of arts and culture. “It has always been my belief that you have to know [the] past to understand the now and the future of a culture,” he explains, “So I have found galleries and museums key to travel and my world education. The galleries with their amazing staff always make for a totally enjoyable experience and a great memory. Without art/cultural heritage of any kind, we are nothing at all; we would just exist and go through the motions. The arts/places have to be held up as a mirror of the past, and [they] now help point to the future.”
When asked if he had any additional comments, Ross said, “I just want to thank all the faceless people that help us become Canadians, the people that volunteer at all the events and the people at Canoo. Most of all, remembering my first feelings when I arrived in Canada, [I believe] anything is possible here. Thank you, Canada.”
As of today, the Sherbrooke Museum of Nature and Science has partnered with Canoo to welcome new Canadian citizens into their space with free admission.
Canoo is a mobile app that helps new Canadian citizens celebrate their citizenship by providing free admission to over 1400 museums, science centres, art galleries, parks, and historic sites across Canada.
The Sherbrooke Museum of Nature and Science is a buzz of activities of all kinds: exhibitions, multi-sensory shows, educational activities, talks, and corporate events. Its mission is : to inspire, amaze, and make it possible for the public to discover nature, science, and the richness of collections from our natural heritage. Learn more on their website.
Canoo members in Sherbrooke, QC, and the surrounding area, check your app to learn more about the Sherbrooke Museum of Nature and Science and to visit!
To find more places to visit near you, be sure to enable location services on the Canoo app. Learn more about the app on the Canoo Help Centre.
Meet Canoo member Susan Shaw from Calgary.
Susan says that she chose to move to Canada because she wanted a country with “a future – and snow!” She loves the space, the mountains, the people, and the feeling of safety that Canada provides her.
Her favourite place to visit is Kananaskis Country, Alberta. This Alberta Parks location is full of beautiful views of the mountains and Susan spent many nights in the park during a road trip from Alberta to B.C. with her children.
Susan believes that cultural places “teach people who didn’t grow up being Canadian what the history of Canada is, how [Canada] reflects the diversity of all its citizens, from the original inhabitants through to the modern immigrants.”
Susan says she’s loved using Canoo to visit cultural venues. “I have enjoyed searching new places to visit that I would not [have] known about if I hadn’t had Canoo,” she says, “The app is so easy to use and I have [had] positive reactions from people when I show the Canoo [app]; people congratulate and welcome me as a new Canadian.”
“No matter where my birth country is,” Susan says, “first and foremost, [I am] Canadian.”
As of today, The Film Reference Library at TIFF Bell Lightbox has partnered with Canoo to welcome new Canadian citizens into their space.
Canoo is a mobile app that helps new Canadian citizens celebrate their citizenship by providing free admission to over 1400 museums, science centres, art galleries, parks, and historic sites across Canada.
Travel back home or explore somewhere new through film at the Film Reference Library. Spend your afternoons watching over 18,000 films from more than 50 countries, or read through 25,000 books on anything and everything film. Open for free five days a week, the Film Reference Library is the ultimate resource for film lovers from all over the world.
The Film Reference Library is located on the 4th floor of TIFF Bell Lightbox which is best known as one of the major venues for the annual Toronto International Film Festival.
Canoo members in Toronto and the surrounding area, check your app to learn more about The Film Reference Library at TIFF Bell Lightbox! Learn more about the app on the Canoo Help Centre.
Ananya Ohri, artistic director of the Home Made Visible Project (HMV)
Home Made Visible (HMV) is a nationwide archival project by the Regent Park Film Festival, Toronto’s longest running free community film festival. HMV highlights the histories of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC). Under the artistic direction of Ananya Ohri, HMV collected home movies from BIPOC communities across Canada to digitize and archive them for free. It also brought together Indigenous and visible minority artists to explore the connections between our vast and varied communities. The commissioned artworks and digitized home movies were presented through a series of public screenings across Canada. HMV ended in 2019 but the archival material produced remains accessible through the York University Libraries.
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your relationship to film and archives?
I was born in India and came to Canada when I was 10 years old. When my grandmother finally moved to Canada to spend the last years of her life with family, she could not bring the trunk full of photographs and documents that were sitting in her apartment in New Delhi. In many ways, this feels like a huge loss. And I also know that there are other ways for me to connect with that history. I have living relatives I can speak to, I can visit sites, and there are digital copies of some of the contents of that trunk somewhere. I consider this a privilege. What happens, though, when you do not have ways to connect with your past? What happens when others piece together what your history looked like? And shape ideas of where you come from, what and who you can call your own, or not? This has been a reality for many communities who have experienced (and continue to experience) displacement, enslavement, and colonization. People in these communities have worked hard to reach back and find connections with the past that bring integrity, pride, anchoring, and resonance with who they are and who they are becoming.
Archives, and personal and community archives in particular, are important to me because they give a glimpse into histories that have been overlooked, marginalized, and misrepresented. They hold nuance and complexity that has been glossed over or simplified. They demonstrate that our individual histories are important to us AND the wider communities we belong to. They are a reminder to honour our own stories, especially when we feel like there is no point or the task seems too difficult.
While I have time on my side, I should get to tracing the contents of that trunk. They give insight into the forces of history that have shaped me and offer up a slice of history that belongs to an entire peoples.
Tell us how the Home Made Visible Project (HMV) came about:
HMV came about because home movies by BIPOC communities were not part of our institutional archives and because, unless they were digitized, the tapes and reels on which these home movies did exist would soon be falling apart.
The project also came about because through our work at the Regent Park Film Festival, I have come to recognize the immense importance of representing joy in BIPOC communities. And home movies are full of joy. So we got to work asking people if they had home movies, we then digitized them for free and added a copy of a portion of each to the York University archives. There is a repository of BIPOC joyful instances through this archive, which I hope will inspire new stories, images, and representations that reinforce our capacity to be joyfully complex people.
What were your initial thoughts on the power of archives to shape who we become? And how did they evolve as you embarked on the HMV project?
I wanted to preserve home movies and put together an archive that would encourage new kind of stories – joyful stories – about BIPOC communities, which can often get lost among the more challenging stories that get told.
Through the three years of the project, I gained better appreciation for how long it takes an archive to come together and how much longer it can take for it to reach people. After digitizing 300 films and archiving excerpts from each donor family’s collection, we need to create ways that artists, academics, and curious minds will not only come across this archive but create something from it for a wider audience to engage with. This archive has just been around for less than 2 years – it has ways to go, not only in terms of the material it can preserve and collect, but also the people it can reach, before it can make a big impact on greater representation of joy in BIPOC stories.
How are home movies different from other archival materials, and what can they do for representation?
Archival documents have traditionally been official records (like ownership documents) or anthropological records (like documentation and photographs taken by explorers). BIPOC communities, in all their diversity, have often been excluded from the official records, historically disenfranchised to be landowners, etc. Or been misrepresented or left out by someone else in the anthropological records. Home movies are a type of historic where at least one person from their own community captured a moment that they wanted to capture, in a way they wanted to capture it. It is a record of self-preservation and self-representation.
BIPOC communities have fought to tell their stories. And most of these, given the history of Canada, are very challenging. With the addition of documentation of joy to the archive, it is my hope that the stories we tell will increase in complexity, where we are not continually an issue to be reflected upon, but whole humans, with a range of experiences.
Could you speak more about your interest in exploring how our diverse histories converge?
Black, Indigenous and People of Colour communities, BIPOC, is such a vast term, bringing together identities based on the similarities they share with each other in their relationship with whiteness and white supremacy. But how do these various identities, their experiences, their beliefs, their histories intersect with one another? And how can these intersections better lead us to a shared liberation? These are the questions that spark my interest in exploring how our diverse histories converge on this land called Canada. In particular, I want to cultivate a context where Black and POC artists feel supported in extending their engagement beyond ideas of migration, displacement, and diaspora, to also exploring their connections to Indigenous peoples and colonization.
What was the response to the artworks and selected clips?
There was a range of responses: marveling at new information, to simply being dazzled by the joy. My hope is that the pieces sparked people’s interest in personal archiving of their own. In some cases, especially in the workshops, I could see that.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
The Regent Park Film Festival is Toronto’s longest running free community film festival, dedicated to showcasing local and international independent works relevant to people from all walks of life, with a focus on inviting those from low income and public housing communities. The films presented break stereotypes and show that no one place or person has just one story.
Meet Canoo member Shameka and her family.
As a new Canadian citizen, Shameka believes that active citizenship is an important practice. “Active citizenship means to me getting involved in your community no matter how small the activity may be,” explains Shameka. “[For example,] sitting on a parent council at your kids school or volunteering to go in and speak about your career for career day or donating to your local food bank. It doesn’t have to be something elaborate; it just has to be something that has an impact on others and making a difference in their lives.”
“The best place I’ve visited using Canoo was Telus Spark Science Centre,” says Shameka, “We visited on a Statutory Holiday and it was a bit crowded but my kids had an awesome time… for once my 5 year old didn’t complain that he was bored and actually didn’t want to leave! It felt so good watching my kids explore the centre and ask questions about how things worked, [even] competing with each other in operating the simple machines. I have never seen them that engaged before. Now we have a membership for the centre. Canoo afforded my family the opportunity to visit some places that we would not have thought about visiting and we totally enjoyed the experience!”
Shameka thinks that cultural places “help people to have a deeper appreciation and understanding of different cultures and this leads to persons feeling more connected and comfortable in society.”
As of today, The Market Gallery has partnered with Canoo to welcome new Canadian citizens into their space with free admission.
Canoo is a mobile app that helps new Canadian citizens celebrate their citizenship by providing free admission to over 1400 museums, science centres, art galleries, parks, and historic sites across Canada.
The Market Gallery animates the second floor of the South St. Lawrence Market, which encloses all that remains of Toronto’s original 19th-century Front Street City Hall council chamber, operating from 1845-1899. The historic site presents a variety of changing exhibits related to the art, culture and history of Toronto.
Canoo members in Toronto and the surrounding area, check your app to learn more about The Market Gallery and to visit! To find more places to visit near you, be sure to enable location services on the Canoo app. Learn more about the app on the Canoo Help Centre.
Meet Canoo member Christine Samonte.
Christine immigrated to Canada over 10 years ago, and now lives in the Calgary area. She received her Canadian citizenship in June 2019. Christine chose to move to Canada in part because “it’s one of the most beautiful countries in the world!”
Christine’s favourite city in Canada is Vancouver, but her favourite place in the country is Banff National Park, and she visits the park regularly. “I always love Banff because of its amazing sceneries,” she says.
She believes that Canoo helps to play a role in building social inclusion as it allows her to “enjoy and witness the different cultures” in Canada. “What I love most about Canada is its diversity of people and culture,” she says.
