Photo courtesy of Sandra Regier.

Today Canada’s History is announcing the first ever recipients of the Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Community Programming. It’s the terrific culmination of several years of work celebrating local history projects and expanding our national awards program. Read the full press release here.

I was really fortunate last week to actually visit our first English recipient in the community of Saint-Joseph, Ontario and to speak with members of their historical society. I can’t imagine a community that better encapsulates the idea and values of this award.

Their project was the production of a play about local icon Narcisse Cantin. I’ve been educated fairly well on his story over the last week, but you can read about his plans to turn Saint-Joseph into a modern day mega city at one end of a major canal stretching between Lake Erie and Lake Huron.

I was headed to Saint-Joseph to interview representatives about the project for our website [video coming soon, and you’ll see why in a moment]. Normally we interview a spokesperson about a given project, film some b-roll, and move along. But the Historical Society would have none of that and I can understand why after conducting interview with over 40 residents and children.

Seeing a project that required the contributions of so many people raises my hopes for what any community can accomplish. Everything from the will behind the project to make it happen, the writer, the director, the fundraiser, selling ads, building a theatre out of straw bales, researching the community history, creating an exhibit, making sure everyone was fed – it’s was a true community production that seemed to deeply touch everyone involved.

When I arrived everyone was prepared with their questions to answer for the video and they were well fed and taken care of during the three and half hours of interviews. We even interviewed for another two hours in the morning and managed to get a tour of the city in before I had to jet back to Winnipeg.

And to be honest, I don’t think we could have explained the impact of this project without each and every interview. I was really lucky to be a part of it and hopefully you can take a chance to read about their project and our first French recipient from the wonderful community of Saint-Basil-le-Grand.

And this is just the start to our awards season!