Community and the Human Spirit: Oral Histories from Montreal’s Point St. Charles, Griffintown and Goose Village by Dave Flavell, and: Stone Hill in Baltimore: Stories from a Cotton Mill Village by Guy Hollyday, and: Under the Volcano: The People of Kalapana, 1823 to 2010 by Charles Langlas, Kupuna (review)

Oral historians have long considered interviews conducted about a community by its own members to be an important subdiscipline loosely known as community oral history. Qualities associated with community oral history include an insider’s perspective, a project that originates within the community, and a goal that serves the immediate community, such as an anniversary celebration. The term community oral history is used more for purposes of discussion than for seeking any clear distinction between community oral history and any other kind of oral history, allowing the term to shift to fit the practice of the day. In any case, oral historians highly value community oral history, and the practice is discussed actively in online forums, at conferences, and in print.

One group less visible in these discussions consists of individuals who set about to document their own community through the words of its members, often, but not always, using the recorded interview format. For discussion purposes, I will call them citizen historians. These practitioners do not necessarily call themselves oral historians, and many, such as the authors of the books reviewed here, have not received formal oral history training (though many others have, and increasingly so). Citizen historians, usually unaffiliated, are simply individuals who witness an important piece of history and set out to document it, often with photos, maps, and other materials to accompany personal stories. I suggest that citizen historians have much to contribute to current discussions in oral history more broadly and that their input may contribute to a deeper and more focused definition of community oral history. A review of three privately published books that citizen historians created is, therefore, a good way to start the conversation.

In Community and the Human Spirit: Oral Histories from Montreal’s Point St. Charles, Griffintown and Goose Village, author Dave Flavell paints a picture of life in three rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods near the Lachine Canal in Montreal, Quebec. He conducted interviews between 2011 and 2014 with residents who were born between 1920 and 1959 and grew up in these neighborhoods. The era marks a critical point in urbanization in Montreal and throughout North America, and the author considers these narrators to be the last to experience these neighborhoods as closely intertwined strips of residential/industrial communities standing squarely at what was the heart of industrialization in Montreal.

The body of Flavell’s book consists of twenty-six life histories based on conversations between the author and each narrator; Flavell introduces each life story with a one-paragraph synopsis. An informative introduction to these Montreal neighborhoods and well-chosen historical photos and maps add to the book’s value. Further contextual matter includes a bibliography, notes on methodology, and an extensive list of photo credits.

The life stories are rich with details about daily life, neighborhood, and the significant people in the lives of narrators, who are mentioned by name; all of the interviews are well edited for readability. The author is obviously a skilled writer and editor, and the narratives paint a predictable picture of Canadian working-class life in the first half of the twentieth century, centered on family, work, school, church, and courtship and sprinkled with a few youthful, but benign, pranks. It makes me wonder whether there is a missing subtext, or if life really did chug along so smoothly.

Flavell, retired from a career in public service...