community invention space optimism peace
mutable culture canada by zile liepins
Culture reconstructed. A model of home. Cultural compound in Milton, Ontario
Summer camp is ready to start, with military tents in place and the Latvian flag overhead, 1950s. Dancing on the dance floor in the 1960s.
Immigrants have a choice – to assimilate and try to forget where they came from, or to promote and re-create their culture within their new environment. Often the decision comes down to the reason for leaving. Willing immigrants lean towards changing their names and blending in while people that have been forced to leave their home cling to their nationality more than before. Many Latvians emigrated in the 1940s, fleeing Russian occupation and deportation. Preserving Latvian culture was particularly urgent because already swallowed up by Russia into the mighty USSR, this little country risked extinction. Toronto is rich with cultures and cultural centres, but I wonder how many small ‘cities’ have been built in its outskirts. In the 1950s, the Latvian community (more specifically, St. Andrews Latvian Lutheran Church in downtown Toronto) built one in Milton. It was named Sidrabene, after an ancient castle in Latvia. It was a small haven, where everybody spoke your language and understood where you came from, where older people could remember and younger, learn. It is still in use, and in fact, there are two others like it in the Toronto area. Its fundamental purpose was to serve as a children’s camp but it has all the (mini) institutions of a small town – cabins, a church, a dining hall, a café, an outdoor dance floor, performance areas, a track field, tennis courts…even a small ‘hospital’ and ‘hotel’, where non- owners could rent rooms. The signage is in Latvian.
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