Harmony/Harmonie

Christine Hughes is a policy analyst at the Ontario Native Affairs
Secretariat.

This nicely produced bilingual pictorial essay is the companion to a
traveling exhibit of photographs titled “Them = Us: Photographic
Journeys Across Our Cultural Boundaries.” The exhibit drew together
the talents of 24 photojournalists and photographers who set out in the
summer of 1997 to capture the diversity of Canadian culture. The
national tour opened in Vancouver and Charlottetown in October 1997 and
was subsequently shown across Canada in shopping malls, museums,
libraries, and art galleries.

The more than 100 black-and-white photos featured in this oversized
book are interspersed with fragments of poetry and prose from 24
well-known Canadian writers, including Margaret Atwood, Timothy Findley,
Tomson Highway, Joy Kogowa, Anne Michaels, Nino Ricci, and Carol
Shields. The photos themselves feature subjects that include farmers in
Manitoba, Montreal taxi passengers, Ottawa high-school students,
residents of Montreal neighborhoods, Native children in Sept-Оles and
Nunavut, and migrant workers in Southwestern Ontario.

A separate section at the end of the book provides short quotes from
each of the photographers featured in the book explaining why they chose
the subject matter for their photographs.

Journalist and author June Callwood provides a short introduction to
the origins of the National Movement for Harmony in Canada, an
independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit national organization. She also
compiled the accompanying poetry and prose. Callwood is an honorary
patron of the Harmony Movement, which tries to encourage Canadians of
diverse backgrounds to value each other and to celebrate their
differences.