Civic Memory Work in Brantford, Ontario

Abstract

At a moment when immigration in Canada is framed through targets, housing pressures, labour shortages, and social capacity, this article argues that public humanities can reframe immigration as a question of civic memory. Immigrant Memories of Brantford , a public history initiative launched in 2019, brings together heritage organizations, university researchers, theatre practitioners, and community members to recover and interpret the immigrant and racialized histories of Brantford, Ontario, through museum exhibitions, oral history, theatre, walking tours, and public programming. Brantford’s public identity has long centred on manufacturing achievement while the immigrant workers, families, businesses, churches, and mutual-aid networks that built industrial urban life have remained largely outside the public story. This article frames the project as participatory civic memory work: a public humanities practice that decentralizes historical authority and turns objects, places, and performances into public arguments. It also theorizes civic memory as the collective stories a city tells about who built it and who belongs in it, stories that shape belonging for newcomers today. Immigration is not only a policy issue; it is also a struggle over public memory and belonging.