Voices from Home: Capturing the Stories that Shape Us

Illustration at left by Charlie Ford.

What is home to you? Are they the photos that hang on your wall, the memories of family gatherings for various occasions, or maybe your dream kitchen?

The Voices from Home project seeks to answer these questions. Spearheaded by community leader and architecture professor Dorothy Stern, former chair of Hillel Ottawa, and her former student Charlie Ford, who currently works with Global Affairs Canada to design Canadian embassies around the world, the project aims to capture the essence of home through a series of interviews being conducted at the Bess and Moe Greenberg Family Hillel Lodge, where they ask residents what home means to them.

Recently, the E-Bulletin was able to sit down (virtually) with Stern and Ford to learn more about their project.

E-Bulletin: What is the Voices from Home project?

Dorothy Stern: The Voices from Home project is about the many stories that make up the lives of residents at Hillel Lodge. It is primarily focused upon residents telling their own stories to Charlie and me in a very informal conversation. We don’t ask questions like ‘who are you,’ ‘what do you do?’ It's about them telling their stories within the framework of the meaningful spaces that they live in.

It came about as a result of a different project that Charlie and I worked on about how immigrants to Canada create a sense of home in their new environment. I went to Hillel Lodge and met with Ted Cohen, (CEO of the Lodge), and said it would be really wonderful to meet with seniors in the community and talk to them about who they are and how they have created this wonderful sense of space with the material culture that they bring to their room.

We are also doing this project because we want to let our seniors know that we care about their stories and that we are listening to them.

Charlie Ford: We have a list of questions that we can use to help guide the conversation. Most of the time, it’s a jumping-off point. The person being interviewed decides where we go, what we talk about, what's important to them. I think it's a study on culture, a study on human experience. It’s very qualitative.

E-Bulletin: What prompted your interest in this project?

Dorothy Stern: This project, as I said, came out of a different project that I worked on with my colleagues at Carleton University. When Charlie and I met, I was a coordinator of the Bachelor of Interior Design program. My master's thesis led to my focus on this subject. Charlie and I met at school and she's incredible, and luckily, we are able to do this together. I think the centrality of home, ordinary stuff, nothing fancy, is very, very important and tells our story.

Charlie Ford: I am working in the Interior design Department for Global Affairs Canada. We do design work for our Canadian embassies. I'm from Toronto, but moved to Ottawa, which is when I met Dorothy. I went to the Bachelor of Interior Design program where Dorothy was my professor. I just had a real interest in “home” and the people that are in them and what's important to people. That's when Dorothy invited me along for this project.

E-Bulletin: What do Lodge residents identify as home?

Charlie Ford: We initially went in with a biased idea of what we were looking to get out of this. We asked questions like “what did you physically bring into your space?” We asked questions about things like lampshades or photographs. Most of the time, they say that the physical items aren’t what’s important, and that their memories are what make a place feel like home to them. We often hear stories from their past.

E-Bulletin: Why is this important for our community?

Dorothy Stern: All of the videos of the residents will go to the collections in the Ottawa Jewish Archives. Some are already there. This is a record of Ottawa in 2024. We interviewed people from all different walks of life. We have interviewed some non-Jewish people and some Jewish people to hear their stories. It’s important that future members of our communities have a resource they can listen to what people say about who they were, where they came from, and how they've contributed. It tells us about our community, and it is a resource for future generations. Many of these seniors are in their 90s. We can learn what Ottawa was like back then, or Ontario for that matter, even some small towns.

These residents' stories a true gift and represent an irreplaceable glimpse into their often remarkable personal journeys.

Charlie Ford: A lot of those stories are passed down within families, but we don't often get the opportunity to get those stories outside of that. Now, we are gathering that information on our end. We are creating a tool to share with other people. We are a very diverse community and culture.

E-Bulletin: What does home mean to you?

Dorothy Stern: In one of the most significant books I have studied with regard to the meaning of home entitled "House a Mirror of Self,” the author, Cooper-Marcus states “home is a place of self-expression, a vessel of memories and a cocoon where we feel nurtured and can let down our guard.”

Having finished the first part of the project already, with the audio and visual components now at the Ottawa Jewish Archives, the second part of the project will wrap up towards the end of March to the beginning of April, with a celebratory vernissage occurring around then.

You can learn more about the Voices from Home project and the work that Dorothy and Charlie do by getting in touch with Teigan Goldsmith, Archivist at the Ottawa Jewish Archives at archives@jewishottawa.com