Welcome to the last of our Summer Series on Acadian history! This week marks not only the end of our series, it’s also the fête nationale d’Acadie on August 15th! From the amount of people who tried to wish me a “Joyeux Saint Jean Baptiste” on the 24th of June, there seem to be quite a few people who are unaware of the fact that Acadians have their own national holiday, chosen specifically to be separate from that of the Québec St-Jean Baptiste day by the convention nationale d’Acadie in 1881. (If you want to find out more about that process, both Chantal Richard and Ron Rudin have written about it.)
This year’s fête nationale comes with its own special surprise – our own heritage minute! I’ve been a big fan of the heritage minutes since I was a kid, so to get one that features Acadian history is pretty special. The debut will be on stage in Moncton during the Congrès Mondiale Acadienne 2019, after which everybody can see it on YouTube! I’ll be sure to post it on twitter for everybody to see, so be sure to watch that space! And, as always, you can catch the rest of the summer series here.
For this interview, we put together a series of questions which were then answered by the staff at Historica who were directly responsible for those areas of production. So while we’re not always sure who exactly answered each question, we would like to thank Andrea Hall and Melissa O’Neil for coordinating this effort and making this interview happen. We’d also like to thank Jessica Knapp for contributing to the interview development. So, without further ado…
How is Historica Canada supporting Canadians with further learning, like educational materials? What kind of conversations are you hoping to start with Heritage minutes, and with this particular heritage minute (the Acadian Deportation minute?)
Historica Canada’s goal is to help Canadians learn more about our past. The Heritage Minutes are an opportunity for Canadians to be inspired to learn more about a particular subject. Where there is funding, we take the opportunity to provide further classroom learning materials geared explicitly towards the subject matter of a newly released Minute. In any case, we utilize our shared resources from other Historica Canada programs like The Canadian Encyclopedia, which houses articles on a variety of topics including Acadian history, culture and the deportation.
We hope to start conversations among Canadians about our shared history. We love when people say, “I didn’t know about this before” or “Thanks for sharing this piece of Canadian history with us.” The goal is to engage, teach, learn, and be inspired by our history.
With this particular Heritage Minute, we hope that Canadians across the country will learn about the Acadian deportation and be inspired to learn more about Acadian history. We also hope that Acadians will learn something about their own history that they might not have known before.
Are there different consultants for the research and for the filming? E.G. researching costumes and props vs researching the history. Can you tell us more about the work that goes into this research?
Yes – we hire specific historical/community consultants to work with the Heritage Minutes team in the research and script writing stage. They see iterations of the story treatment, script and storyboards before we go to film. They also consult on the editing process. Their primary role is to ensure that the individual or community we are highlighting in the Heritage Minute is portrayed in an accurate and respectful way. Historical accuracy is important to us, and these consultants are our first fact-checkers.
We hire individuals who specialize in material culture to be with us on set to help us to ensure that our set design, props and wardrobe items are all factually accurate to the time and place the Heritage Minute is set in. These individuals help us to make sure that everything that ends up on screen is historically relevant to the Heritage Minute.
How are heritage minutes used? How do you want this minute to be used? Do you have any supporting curriculum?
The Heritage Minutes are available online (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Historica Canada website) as well as on broadcast TV. They can be used at events free of charge. They are sent to our growing list of educators to be used in the classroom. Our team is always looking for new screens to showcase the Minutes – all you need to do if you’d like to screen the Minutes at your event, museum or office is email us at minutes @ historicacanada (dot) ca and we’ll send you the files!
The Heritage Minute is the face; tell us about what goes on behind the scenes.
Behind the scenes on set is usually an array of details – making sure our material culture consultant sees all the costumes before the director yells action, making sure that all the props and items in the frame have been seen and vetted by our consultant, making sure we are sticking to the storyboards and getting lots of coverage of each scene should we need to make a change in the editing room.
Timing is always also a key component. We don’t usually have a lot of time, so it is important to stick to the schedule!
Our producers usually handle the logistics on each shoot day – ensuring the actors get to set on time for hair, make up and wardrobe, that the camera team has everything they need, and that we all have snacks to make it through the many hours ahead!
Minutes are only 60 seconds, so where is the rest of it? What is the best way for the average viewer to find out more?
The Heritage Minutes team provides additional content videos on each new Heritage Minute that is released. Check out our social media feeds or the “Heritage Minutes Extras” Playlist on YouTube to watch.
We also direct people to The Canadian Encyclopedia, a free, bilingual online resource of over 20,000 fact-checked articles and learning tools about Canada, including content specifically related to Acadian history and culture.
How do you recruit the actors? Are they related to the story? Is anyone involved in telling the story on screen related to the history being performed? How do actors prepare for this kind of role?
Actors are generally sourced by our production team from a casting call. However, sometimes special consideration is given when we want to cast individuals for specific stories. For example, we had an open casting call for extras for the Vancouver Asahi Heritage Minute that encouraged anyone of Japanese Canadian background to apply – we had over 50 people agree to come out! For the Acadian Heritage Minute, we asked for Acadian talent when casting our principal actors. We had a connection through one of our staff to La Baie en Joie – a world-renowned Acadian dance troupe. As we needed many young female extras to fill out our deportation scene, we reached out to them to see if they would be interested in acting as extras on this Heritage Minute. The other actors in the Acadian Minute are nearly all Acadian (with the exception of the British soldiers!).
I’ve recently had experience having to decide what facts, and how much of those facts, go into a narrative script. Luckily my scripts were much longer. Can you tell us about the process behind developing a Heritage Minute script, and the amount of “behind the scenes” research that goes into producing a one-minute film?
A lot of research goes into producing the script. Usually our team collects research materials from libraries, archives and news sources across the country. For this new Acadian Minute specifically, many secondary sources were first consulted, and then we turned our attention to as much primary source material as possible. Thankfully there is a wealth of digitized material in the Nova Scotia archives which includes letters written by the British soldiers and generals during the deportation. These materials help us to craft the story – for example, they wrote about burning buildings, so we felt confident that we could accurately include a burning house. While no Acadian accounts of the deportation survive, we relied on our historical consultants – both academics from the Acadian community – to help us understand the Acadian perspective.
Whose voices are represented in this video?
In each Heritage Minute, our team strives to capture the voice of the individual or community we are representing. Given the Acadian Deportation Heritage Minute is a composite story – meaning it isn’t based on one specific historical individual in particular – the voice is simply the voice of an Acadian woman being removed from the only home she’s ever known. The end narration is voiced by Antonine Maillet, an Acadian novelist, playwright and scholar. Her voice highlights the resilience and strength of the Acadian community, and that Acadian culture endures in the Maritimes today, despite the tragedy of 1755.
Thanks for joining us, not just today but for this entire series! We’ve had a great time collaborating with Borealia and Acadiensis, as well as with all of our contributors. We hope you enjoyed reading!
As you probably heard, Unwritten Histories is going on an indefinite hiatus. We may be back in the future, with a very different format. If you want to keep up with us, I suggest you follow our social media accounts (you can follow me on twitter here, and follow Andrea here.) Thanks for all your support!
Leave a Reply