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Adding depth to rich history
by Vinay Menon, Television Critic, The Toronto Star, 2/1/2004
What former slaves brought to Canada - TV series highlights ethnic communities
Susan Poizner looks forward to looking back.
The journalist and filmmaker has spent more than 18 months developing a new TV series that explores the history of Canada's ethnic communities.
In her travels, in her quest to exhume ghosts and uncover the past, Poizner is also determined to tell stories from a female perspective.
"I want to shake off my own misconceptions about Canadian history," says Poizner, 37. "Somehow I always believed that it was just the English and the French who made our history, while the rest of Canada's communities just came along for the ride.
"The more I learn about our ethnic groups and the role they played in our past as labour unionists, suffragettes, freedom fighters, and pioneers, the more I realize that Canadian history as I learned it in school was skewed."
So Poizner, who spent 17 years living and working in Russia, Israel and Britain, created Mother Tongue: The Other Side of History.
To give potential sponsors a sense of the 13-part series, she researched, wrote, directed, narrated, and produced a pilot, which airs today to commemorate Black History Month.
Tonight's first episode of Mother Tongue (TVO, 7:30 p.m.) examines the life of Eliza Parker, a fugitive slave who took a brave stand during the Christiana Riot of Sept. 11, 1851 in Pennsylvania.
On that fateful day, Parker and other former slaves fought back against an armed party sent from Maryland to recapture four escaped slaves.
Eventually, Eliza, with her husband William Parker, would flee to Canada via the Underground Railroad, starting a new life at the Elgin Settlement in Buxton, Ont. (near Chatham).
In May, Poizner discovered that descendents of Eliza Parker still live in that area, including 16-year-old Toni Parker, her great-great-granddaughter. So Poizner returned there over the Labour Day weekend to film Mother Tongue. Tonight's half-hour show includes an interview with Toni.
Poizner also visits the Buxton National Historic Site and Museum and Uncle Tom's cabin, which displays some of the ghastly torture devices used to enslave, including the "ball-and-chain," "thumb screws," and the "speculum oris" which owners used to force-feed suicidal slaves.
Poizner, who has filed radio reports for CBC and BBC World about the black community in Buxton, received funding this month that allows her to complete the series. Research begins this week. Filming will start in May. And new episodes of Mother Tongue are schedule to air next year.
Other communities to be profiled include Chinese, Acadian, Ukrainian, Russian, Vietnamese, Japanese, Somali, First Nations, Italian, Icelandic, Finnish and Jewish.
The goal is to inform viewers about the role ethnic groups have played in Canadian history and to shatter popular misconceptions.
Ella Forbes, author of But We Have No Country: The 1851 Christiana Pennsylvania Resistance, says Eliza Parker - who reportedly hacked Gorsuch with sickle after he was shot - helps destroy the myth that blacks did little to resist slavery.
"So often Africans are depicted as passive, docile, as if we never fought for our own liberation," says Forbes. "In reality, the existence of a self-defense organization, solely composed of African people appears to be unheard of, but this is only one self-defense (group) out of possibly hundreds or thousands."
The other aim of Mother Tongue is to empower young females by exposing them to history - or, as Poizner remarks tonight, "herstory."
At the end of the episode, Toni is shown laying flowers at the grave of her great-great-grandmother.
"When I think of the Christiana Riot I think if I was ever in a situation where someone was trying to take away my rights or say I couldn't do something... I guess I would stand my ground. I guess it's really helped me to be someone stronger."
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This series of educational videos was made possible with funding from
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Mother Tongue: A woman's history of ethnic Canada is a 13-part TV series that documents Canada's multicultural history from a female perspective. Each program tells the story of a notable woman in one of Canada's communities, including a Black fugitive slave, an Acadian mail order bride, and an Icelandic suffragette.
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