Words and Pictures - Photojournalism by Jerome Wakeland

The 4th Canadian Islamic Cultural Expo was held at the Vancouver Art Gallery on July 25 and 26.

On Monday morning an underground transformer failed, sending a manhole cover into the air and billowing smoke down Richards St. The downtown core of Vancouver lost power for several blocks, shutting businesses and schools. Traffic lights at some of the busiest intersections in the core also went black, causing a reversion to the four-way stop method. Traffic Enforcement units of the Vancouver Police Department were called-out to direct the throngs of vehicles as officials instructed people to avoid the downtown core.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve added another photo narrative project, The New Canadians, to my projects page. I used a little more Flash than on the other photographic narratives. The new project uses Flash for the main stage and then buttons take you to the four different stories that make up the total project.

The swearing-in slideshow is an overview of the whole thing. I put the images in chronological sequence so you move through the events from the beginning to the end in a photojournalistic style.

The other slideshows are a combination of the audio interviews, candid images and posed portraits I collected from Citizenship Judge Brown and one family that became Canadian on July 1, 2008.

Thanks to the Communications officers, Ben Letts and Therese, who arranged for my interview with Judge Brown. Thanks as well to Pegah, Behdad and Paniz who took the time to answer my questions and read their documents into my microphone.

So I’m Canadian, born and raised. And as a Canadian I can tell you, all the other born and raised Canadians, you should go to a citizenship ceremony. If you add the distance of all the places I’ve moved to during my life, it would still be under 15 kilometres. At a citizenship ceremony there are crowds of people who have moved 1000’s of kilometres, who have chosen to come to this place. People who have risked the life they know, whether it’s good or bad, to make a new home here. Some of them have even moved more than once to put themselves into a position to come to Canada.
Pegah Lachin started her journey by moving from Tehran to Paris. Four years ago she moved with her husband, Behdad, and daughter, Paniz, to North Vancouver. All three of them became Canadian citizens during the ceremony at Ambleside park on July 1st, 2008. Citizenship Judge Brenda Brown was responsible for adding Pegah’s family and approximately 80 others to the 31 million citizens of Canada. Judge Brown also gave a speech welcoming the new Canadians. And the speech is why everybody should go to a citizenship ceremony.
In the speech Judge Brown spoke about all the potential these new arrivals bring with them, all the beauty of the country they are coming to, and some of the ways they can join their potential to the beauty. The new arrivals were encouraged to volunteer in their community and to explore the rest of the country at every opportunity. Judge Brown also explained the responsibilities of citizenship and emphasized the equality of all those who are Canadian.
If you just listened to the speech you’d think, “Wow, I want to live there.”
And it turns out that we already do.