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Making Music - Building Bridges: German-Canadian Identities in the Nation's Capital, 1958-19991 Barbara Lorenzkowski In the German village inn at Richmond Road, German pop songs hum from loud-speakers while waitresses in dirndls serve hearty German food. It is here, in the rustic 'German' ambience of Ottawa's family restaurant, the Lindenhof, that members of two German-Canadian choirs have agreed to share their memories of German singing and festivity in the nation's capital.2 "We immigrants, or emigrants, the best luggagethat we brought along were our German folk songs and our love for the Heimat (homeland)," Marianne Schafer muses.3 She arrived in Ottawa in1956, accompanied by three youngchildrenand her husband,whose thirst for adventurewas onlymatched by Marianne's homesickness. Soon, the couplejoined the 'German village,' as local author Dieter Kiesewalter has dubbed Ottawa's German communities. Less prominent than 'Chinatown' on Somerset or 'Little Italy' at the corner of Preston and Gladstone, this 'village' tends to elude the casual tourist - its residents, institutions and associations being dispersed throughout the city. Nonetheless, as Kiesewalter wrote in his bittersweet tribute, Canada - Promised Land?, it is "alive and kicking," complete with inns, farms, bakeries, butcher shops, a Protestant church and a Catholic one, singing associations, dance and music groups and, last but not least, its fair share of rumours and gossip.4 This paper offers a look at the history of Ottawa's 'German village' in the decades following the Second World War. Unlike post-war 'Little Italics' in Ottawa and Toronto, this village cannot be plotted on a city map, as it existed primarily in the social networks and imaginative worlds that tied its members to each other.5 While evoking images of cosiness and a close-knit community, this 'village' also witnessed bitter feuds between German associations as well as animated discussions about what constituted proper 'male' and 'female' spaces. Its residents moved in and out of the village, equally at home in the discursive worlds of (German) Heimat and (Canadian) multiculturalism. Rather than presenting a static and homogeneous entity, the village consisted of a population that juggled roles as varied as 'German' and 'Canadian', musicians and drinking buddies, tradesmen and business owners, mothers and fathers, co-workers and colleagues, and travellers eagerly boarding the plane to Germany, to name just a few.6 In delving into this myriad of identities, this article explores the history of festive culture among Ottawa's German-Canadian communities in the post-war decades. More specifically, it focuses on the public and private worlds of two German-Canadian choirs, one male and one female chorus, that shared the name Concordia Ottawa and were linked by multiple bonds of marriage, friendship and ethnicity. Indoing so,this paper will examine the ways in which ethnicity was expressed in both popular cultural events and ethnic institutions, thus knitting together two fields ofhistorical enquirythat often remain quite separate.7 Inwhich waysdid immigrants represent ethnicity in public? How did they incorporate memories of war and the crimes of Germany's 308 Construire une capitale - Ottawa - Making a Capital recent past into their identities? What can we learn about the intricate interactions of ethnicityand gender? How, finally, did immigrants construct a new sense of belonging? By exploring the symbolic vocabulary employed in Concordia s parties, parades and performances, we can glean answers to these questions. Historians have long shown reluctance to regard folk culture and celebration in ethnic communities as more than a nostalgic touch of 'local colour' or a vehicle for group preservation. Only in recent years, informed by the work of anthropologists, have they begun to turn their attention to public events and celebrations as significant sites of meaning where identities are constructed and traditions invented.8 This newly found interest in ethnicity and celebration has not yet entered the domain of German-Canadian studies. Marginalized withinthe field of Canadian ethnic studies and bypassed by mainstream ethnic historiography, even practitioners of GermanCanadian studies have deplored the lack of methodological sophistication, the celebratory bent and the "culture of complaint."9 Building upon the small body of work that has sought to redress this picture, this study places experiences and narratives of German singing and festivity at the heart of its analysis, weaving together evidence from oral history interviews, German-language and English-language newspapers, historical pamphlets, local histories and the extensive correspondence of the male chorus Concordia Ottawa.™ In the immediate post-war years, Ottawa underwent a massive transformation. Shedding its traditional lumber-related industries...

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