The legacy of Alberta Estonians Project - a progress report -
David Kiil
We continue to make excellent progress on this important initiative. The response to the request for materials, especially photos, stories, music, and videos, has been beyond expectations. More than 2,000 images and four loose-leaf binders of articles have been assembled from various sources and provide ample material for the DVD as well as the Alberta On-line Encyclopedia website.
In the Winter 2006 issue of AjaKaja we were pleased to announce a grant in the amount of $17,200 from the National Estonian Foundation of Canada. Since then, we have received a second grant in the amount of $50,070 from Alberta's Community Initiatives Program. These funds provide us with the necessary means to complete the DVD for presentation at the West Coat Estonian Days in Los Angeles in August.
Polar Bear Entertainment Inc is proceeding with the production of the DVD. Selection of suitable images and movie footage is ongoing, as are oral interviews across the province. Our new President Bob Kingsep's journey to Estonia for a family reunion was filmed and provided some wonderful footage for the project. We've also obtained old photo from several Estonian and Canadian museums/archives to illustrate living conditions in Estonia in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries.
The storyline for the video presentation continues to evolve. It begins with an overview of living conditions in Estonia during the second half of the 19th century. Serfdom had been abolished but the Estonian peasants generally were unable to acquire land from the Baltic-German landowners.
Thousand decided to emigrate to Crimea and various locations east of Estonia, where land was available. The last decade of the 20th century resulted in an influx of Estonians from various parts of Russian, including Estonian, to North America where freedom and free land were offered as a reward for settlement.
The 30-minute documentary will highlight the first wave of Estonian settlers a century ago, the establishment of several unique Estonian settlements in Alberta, and the social and economic forces that helped preserve Estonian culture and traditions over the past 100 years.
The premiere of the 'Their Legacy, Our Heritage: Alberta Estonians' documentary will be at Lincoln Hall on June 16, 2007, and will give those in attendance at this Jaainipäev celebration a first look at the production. Final filming will be done at the celebration and included in the DVD for presentation at the West Coast Estonian Days in Los Angeles in August.
We anticipate that the DVD will be available to Society members and other interested individuals and organizations following the Los Angeles event.
The development of the dedicated Estonian website is also underway by the Heritage Community Foundation and will be featured on their Albertasource.ca.
Initial work involves the design of a dynamic and interactive website to meet project objectives. We anticipate that much of the materials submitted by members of our Society will be accommodated on this website. We hope to have a live prototype website ready for the West Coast Estonian Days in Los Angeles in August 2007, followed by production of all phases of this educational and research tools about the history of Alberta Estonians.
The completion of the full Estonian website is not expected until 2008. In the meantime, we anticipate significant progress by this fall, including a fully-functional prototype of an Estonian website on Alberta On-line Encyclopedia.
The design and production of the website will rely heavily on the impressive track record of the Heritage Community Foundation, show-casing Alberta's historical, natural, cultural, scientific and technical heritage. The Estonian website will thus be a multi-media encyclopedia capturing the history of Alberta's Estonian community past, present, and future, as needed.
