Tale of a Town interviewer Katie Swift  examines photos of  downtown P.G.’s history-photo250News

Prince George, B.C. – The stories about downtown Prince George, will soon be presented in a performance.
Katie Swift has been conducting interviews with P.G. residents about their memories of downtown Prince George, what it was and what it is now. It’s all part of a national oral history tour that has seen the “Tale of a Town” team cross the country gathering tales from Canadian communities.

First launched in May of 2014, Swift says the project is trying to “Capture the collective community memory of Canada’s Main Streets.”

The tales they’ve been collecting are being used to create radio pieces, podcasts, and in some communities like Prince George, theatrical performances. The Prince George performance will take place at the Ramada Hotel March 4th, 5th and 6th.

The stories will live beyond the local performance says Swift “They all get plugged in to a national story map online, so we’re creating a real collection of stories of downtowns all across the country. Also we have a podcast on itunes and it’s also leading up to Canada’s 150th birthday in 2017. We’ll be making a nationally touring show called the Tale of a Town Canada that will be kind of a culminating event.” That will be the show that will feature all the best stories from across the nation.

One of her favourite stories from the Prince George session comes from an interview with Marcel Gagnon. He told about a local fellow who always wore a beat up ball cap, who said he had won the lottery. No one believed him of course, but as the story goes, the fellow bought everyone a keg of beer and when friends gathered to meet him at a local bar, he was wearing a new ball cap, and that’s when they knew the story of the lottery win was true.

“I did an amazing interview with a cobbler in Kirkland Lake in northern Ontario” says Swift “He had inherited the business from his father and still lived in the apartment behind the store. So he would be hanging out in his apartment and just hear ding-ding, and come out and fix their boots or shoes. So these are all the stories we want to capture before it’s all gone. It’s different than writing it down, hearing them tell their own tale, in their own voice and you can see them going back in their mind and remembering details.”

Swift has interviewed dozens of people in Prince George, and will wrap up the interviews Thursday at which time, they will start developing the show that will take place in P.G. “Every show is completely different” says Swift “There will be some projections, some shadow puppetry, some music for sure, but the show is really focused on people’s actual voices from the stories we’ve collected.”