Canada 150 is a national, not-for-profit campaign to celebrate Canada's 150th birthday in 2017 by encouraging the recording and collecting of life stories, family histories as well as community and organization histories.

Founded by Harry van Bommel on July 1, 1997 and originally co-ordinated by Legacies Inc., the project is now led by an interim national Board of Directors that works with organizations and individuals coast to coast in the largest history gathering project in Canadian history. 2009 marked the formal beginning of our work and there is much to prepare in the coming two years before the final 5-year push to collect 1.5 million stories (short and long) in time for our 150th birthday.

Mission Statement

Canada 150 will engage Canadians in a celebration of their past and future by encouraging them to record the stories of their lives, their families and their communities for the benefit of future generations. We will make it enjoyable and straightforward for these irreplaceable memories to be documented and then gathered in an unprecedented collection, mostly online and available to researchers and family historians in perpetuity.

Values

1. Collaboration
   

2. Inclusiveness
   

3. Transparency
   

4. Flexibility
   

5. Technological and Archival Rigour
   

Vision

Imagine Parliament Hill on July 1, 2017. Amidst the other celebrations all visible on a giant screen, the Governor-General pushes a button that officially launches the world’s largest online collection of the stories of everyday people in all walks of life, all readily searchable by keyword.

This ceremony is the culmination of a five-year project that engaged Canadians from coast to coast to coast in a myriad of national and grassroots programs to record their memories and their histories, both to celebrate the past in the present and to create an unparralled resource for the future.

The young have been encouraged to interact with their elders to learn about their pasts. Those in institutions, such as the elderly, have been interviewed about their memories. Aboriginal groups have participated, as have veterans, community groups and corporations. Everyone’s story has been solicited, regardless of sex or age, racial or religious origin, mother tongue, financial status or physical well-being.

To provide flexibility and reliable infrastructure for this celebration, Canada 150 has sourced rock-solid technology and has integrated state-of-the-art archival principles into the design of all programs. The resulting database will be robust, scalable, adaptable, easy to update and a breeze to access. Appropriate measures will safeguard privacy and copyright.

None of this would have happened without Canada 150, a national, not-for-profit group established not only to pursue the mission but also to facilitate the pursuit of the mission by other organizations.

Goals

1. To retain our wealth of oral, written and visual history for geneations to come in repositories available to everyone worldwide.
   

2. To provide a family legacy for generations to come.
   

3. To improve understanding within families and communities through the mutual exchange of stories.
   

4. To enhance Canadian unity through a sense of national pride and a more profound celebration of the contributions of Canadians from diverse backgrounds.
   

Objectives

Generally:

1. 1.to be the largest nation-building project in this or any other country and thus to celebrate both Canadian unity and patriotism with the respect for diversity,
   

2. 2.to engage millions of Canadians in a consideration of the past and future and to improve understanding within families and communities,
   

3. 3.to be memorable beyond 2017 and to create a rich resource of primary materials, both oral and written, available in perpetuity.
   

Specifically Canada 150 will collect short and full-length histories through:

1. Memories [1.2 million uploads of photos and one-to-two paragraph stories about a specific event or family]
   

1. One-of-a-Kind unpublished collections of letters, journals, diaries, films, scrapbooks [150,000 digitalized copies]
   

1. Published books, films, songs, plays, websites, multimedia [150,000 copies]
   

Types of Stories

If something is important in the lives of people, its story should be recorded. Stories may be:

1. 1.An individual's stories,
   

2. 2.Family stories, histories and genealogies,
   

3. 3.Neighbourhood, community, municipality, county and regional histories,
   

4. 4.Corporate histories,
   

5. 5.Stories and histories from faith communities and their places of worship,
   

6. 6.Histories of social clubs, associations, universities and colleges, arts and sports groups, educational institutions and more.
   

Scope

The project will reach out to all Canadians (both inside and outside of Canada) and encourage them to use all mediums available to them. Our goal remains to collect and preserve these stories so the final products must be either in a published format or a digital one. There will be no creative limits to the submissions as Canadians are a wonderfully diverse and creative population.

Target Audiences

As Canada’s largest history gathering project ever, we must be inclusive to fulfill our scope. Special emphasis is needed to reach the broadest audience possible including:

1. 1.youth,
   

2. 2.elders,
   

3. 3.boomers,
   

4. 4.aboriginal groups,
   

5. 5.linguistic and cultural audiences,
   

6. 6.veterans,
   

7. 7.community groups,
   

8. 8.corporations,
   

9. 9.women's groups,
   

10. 10.at-risk groups,
    

11. 11.and as many others as we can bring together over the 5-year period.
    

Funding

Canada 150 will be funded in two ways:

1. 1.Canadians already are paying for their own computers, software, print-on-demand books, video recorders, scrapbooks, CDs, websites, etc. We will offer them encouragement, a database to find local resources that can help them, and a place to put these records, in perpetuity, as all of our gifts to Canada on its 150th birthday.
   

2. 2.Governments (all levels), granting agencies (e.g., foundations), and corporations will be asked  to provide funding to co-ordinate this largest history gathering project in Canadian history. As well they msy help fund local and national programs that make special efforts to reach those Canadians who are less likely to record their stories without help and provide some of the equipment, such as digital scanners, to help communities record their local photos, films and documents in perpetuity.