By David F. Rooney
Achtung! The Revelstoke Multicultural Society continues its exploration of Canadian immigration history through film this evening with a free screening of The Impossible Home.
This episode in the acclaimed series, A Scattering of Seeds, delves into the history of German immigration and will be followed by a panel discussion with Revelstokians who emigrated from Germany including Liane Dorrius,
Mark Schwenck, Cornelius Suchy and Birte Paschen.
The Impossible Home focuses on the experiences of Prairie novelist and poet Robert Kroetsch.
According to a website about this film “he was born in his grandparent’s homestead shack in Heisler, Alberta. The town was settled by ethnic Germans whose descendants farm the region to this day. Kroetsch’s paternal great-great-grandfather emigrated from Germany in 1841, pushed out by the Industrial Revolution. He settled in Ontario and built a watermill. When new technologies and diminishing forests killed that dream, Kroetsch moved his family West, to homestead.”
Filmmaker Carl Bessai’s late father was a close friend and colleague of Robert Kroetsch. They share these German prairie roots. The Impossible Home is a poetic tribute to these origins, which have shaped the landscape and the literary culture of Canada.
If you are interested in the great waves of immigration that made Canada the country it is today then you won’t want to miss this film.
The Impossible Home is being shown January 15 in Room 103 at Okanagan College from 7 pm until 9 pm. Admission is free.
Please click here to view the poster.
