See a photo of Cathryn, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
Q&A with Cathryn Wellner, Question 5:
Q: I’ve had quite a few Canadians as subjects of this Q&A series, giving me the impression that storytelling is thriving in Canada. As a transplant from the US, what similarities and differences do you observe in the storytelling environment between the two neighbor nations?
A: John Ralston Saul may have the answer in his extraordinary book, A Fair Country. He points out that one of the major differences between the US and Canada is the latter’s Métis roots (which he also says we ignore at our peril). Saul writes that the first European arrivals had an egalitarian relationship with the First Nations people who were already here, a relationship destroyed by latter settlers, who brought cultural genocide.
The book is a bestseller in Canada and has led to a great deal of vigorous
dialogue. If he is right (and from my perspective, he is), then perhaps it is not surprising this is a fertile land for storytelling.
When I arrived on Vancouver Island in 1990, I found a thriving storytelling community in three communities that were reasonably close by: Vancouver, Victoria, and Nanaimo. Coming out of a milieu in which personal stories had become the darling of the professional storytellers’ repertoire, I was surprised by how small a role those narratives played among Canadian tellers. Traditional stories and mythology were acceptable fare, but stories of a personal nature were considered self-indulgent.
I think I was under the same misperception so many Americans are, that Canada is really just like the States, just colder. In fact, with a different founding mythology and a different history, it is a country unique from its southern neighbour. I had to learn how to be a storyteller in Canada.
It wasn’t until I got into community development that I discovered storytelling in organizational settings had more of a history in Canada than the U.S., at least in the health realm. That was where the bulk of my contracts came from, and my storytelling background was viewed as an asset, not as some quirky bit of fluff.
Back in 1996 Ron LaBonte and Joan Feather wrote an excellent manual for Health Canada, Handbook on Using Stories in Health Promotion Practice. Reading it, I found a methodological underpinning to some of the work I’d been doing on a trial-and-error basis. (It is referenced widely, but I haven’t been able to find an online source. However, an Australian manual based on their work is available online.)
In subsequent years I came across other Canadian resources that helped to inform my work. I found a receptive audience for the value of storytelling in all the work I did and am grateful to my adopted country.
Here are some Canadian storytelling resources your readers might find interesting:
- Communities Act! — Making Change Happen: Stories from British Columbia diabetes projects
- Get Real: The Art and Power of Storytelling in Workplace Communities
- Once Upon a Time: The Use and Abuse of Storytelling and Anecdote in the Health Sector
- Our Stories: Demonstrating Change through Storytelling
- Seniors As Storytellers
- A story/dialogue method for health promotion knowledge development and evaluation
- Storytelling and the Voluntary Sector in Canada: Capturing the Individual and Collective Stories