A Place Beyond Its Own Existence

No Road Home tells the story of the residents of the Lost Villages of the St Lawrence Seaway. During a massive hydro-electric construction project in the 1950's, residents were told that they would have to abandon their villages, as the Seaway would leave them submerged under water. Many of the Lost Village families had lived on their ancestors' lands for over a hundred years.

Let's listen to a few interviews to see how the residents of the Lost Villages remember their homes. To save you the time (and my personal embarrassment), you can just watch from 9:58 to 11:23:

No Road Home, a student documentary by Rebecca Sykes, Alison Murdock, Jennifer Bate and Stephanie Desjardins.

Almost sixty years later, the residents still refer to the Lost Villages as "home" and express a longing to revisit that place. Residents actively place these Lost Villages through memory and commemoration of the villages. Photos also serve as a locus for memories and place-making:

Photo by artist Louis Helbig. See project website: http://sunkenvillages.ca/

Aerial photos, like this one, by Louis Helbig show traces of the streets and the foundations of homes that once were the Lost Villages. Seeing these photographs has a powerful effect on residents, bringing to the surface memories and emotions from their childhood in the villages.

Both tangible and intangible, the heritage of the Lost Villages is commemorated by the villages' former residents in the Lost Villages Museum. Despite the displacement of these residents and the loss of the villages resulting from an international project between Canada and the USA, commemoration of the Lost Village has only occurred on a local scale. You probably won't find any mention of the project and its consequences in a Canadian history textbook.

The Lost Villages are a key part of the identity of the former residents. Those still living today are the last generation born in the villages and the last with first-hand experiences and memories of them. For them, a key concern is the remembrance of the Lost Villages beyond their own lives: the memory of a place even after it has ceased to physically exist.

It remains to be seen how memory of the Lost Village might be preserved, shared, written and performed after its last witnesses have gone.