--February 26, 2024.
The Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network launched it 4th annual Film Festival on Sunday February 18, 2024 at the Uplands Cultural & Heritage Centre in Sherbrooke. A fun and informative new mini-documentary series called “Raising Spirits: Exploring the cemeteries, crossroads and vanishing places of rural Quebec,” was well-received by the packed in-house audience and from those who tuned in online.
In the “Raising Spirits” series, we are peering into the past to discover why five communities in rural locations in the Eastern Townships fell by the wayside, and what can be learned from their quiet demise,” said project director Heather Darch. “We wanted to make the documentaries entertaining, but they are also factual and well-researched so that we can bring local stories to life. These little places had people with busy lives and they not only had joy and successes in life, but they also endured misfortune which often meant leaving their homes and abandoning everything they had built.”
The series filmed and edited by photographer and videographer Allison Kirkwood, features five guest presenters who each have emotional connections to the small crossroads and hamlets they represented. Local historian Stephen Moore for example, brings the audience to Magoon’s Point; now almost completely gone from the landscape except for the ruins of a lime kiln.
High school teacher Rebecca MacMillan speaks about her home called Gould Station, a one-time busy train stop and lumber mill and now where only the vestiges of these buildings remain and Townships’ writer Maurice Crossfield journeys to a place called Lost Nation where a tiny moss-covered cemetery deep in the woods is all that is left. Marcel Heyligen and George Weller also share their stories and personal memories from Malmaison and Heathton respectively.
“These films will help to keep the memory of these communities in our minds,” says QAHN’s Executive Director Matthew Farfan. “QAHN hopes to encourage people to learn more about the abandoned places and cemetery sites near where they live and to be advocates for protecting what is left.” To see the event and watch the five mini-documentaries funded by Canadian Heritage and the Townshippers’ Foundation, head to QAHN’s YouTube channel or Facebook page www.facebook.com/QAHNCanada.