The Corning Centre had the honour of introducing Bared Maronian’s inspiring and powerful documentary, Women of 1915 for the second time at Hamazkayin Toronto Pomegranate Film Festival Committee’s special encore presentation in benefit of the A.R.S. Armenian School annual Telethon on Saturday, February 25. Corning Centre Founder and Chair Raffi Sarkissian introduced the film stating “The documentary you are about to see is very unique as was Bared Maronian’s previous documentary, Orphans of the Genocide. Both left audiences worldwide with knowledge they would not have otherwise come across and a high level of curiosity, prompting one to dig deeper and learn more. Bared’s creations embody every aspect of an excellent documentary. Therefore, it is no coincidence that he has received many honours and awards.”

At the event, the Corning Centre’s Director of Finance, Paul Ternamian, presented the Speak Out contest to the audience and invited the awardees to stage. Director Bared Maronian joined the Corning Centre on stage to present the awardees with their certificates and awards. On the occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, among its several initiatives, the Corning Centre held an Essay and Creative Writing Contest called Speak Out. The contest was open to all senior level high school students in Ontario, awarding a first place prize in each category of $500 and a runner prize of $100.

This year’s winners represented two schools from two school boards. Cameron Heights Collegiate Institute in the Waterloo Region District School Board and Sir Allan Macnab Secondary in the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board. 

The students who won this year were fortunate to have had exemplary teachers who attended the event, both of whom have worked with the Corning Centre in the past. The Corning Centre recognized the two outstanding Ontario teachers for their commitment to genocide education, Erin Ledlow from Cameron Heights Collegiate Institute in the Waterloo Region District School Board and Deborah Brown from Sir Allan Macnab Secondary in the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board. The two teachers received a copy of Aram Adjemian’s “A Call From Armenia: Canada’s Response to the Armenian Genocide” and Bared Maronian’s two films on DVD “Orphans of the Genocide” and “Women of 1915”.

The Corning Centre awarded prizes to their students whose works were chosen for first and second places for the centre’s Speak Out Contest, held on the occasion of the Centenary of the Armenian Genocide. Congratulations to the winners of the essay contest, Gabriella Zepeda Ayala (first place) and Nate Skeen (second place) and the winners of the creative writing contest, Casey Monkelbaan (first place) and Lareb Zahra (second place).

We want to congratulate all the winners and participants and thank teachers for their continued support and dedication to Genocide Education. Paul Ternamian concluded the award ceremony by stating “Education is the most effective means to equip every new generation with the knowledge and skills needed to become positive contributors in society and agents of change. The grade 11 Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity Course has been doing just this thanks to dedicated teachers like Erin and Deborah.”

Pages from Armenian-Canadian History is the Corning Centre’s first book-length publication. It brings together all known issues of Ararat Monthly and Արարատ ամսաթերթ, two newsletters published by the Georgetown Boys and their teacher Aris Alexanian in the 1920s.

The Georgetown Boys were a group of 110 genocide orphans brought to Canada starting in 1923. Led by Alexanian, they created the Ararats to practice their English and Armenian, to share their artwork and short stories, to spread news about life on their orphanage-farm, and to keep connected with Armenians around the world. The publication of Pages from Armenian-Canadian History was made possible by our work, over ten years, to gather the dispersed remnants of these newsletters from families, libraries, and archives in Canada, Armenia, Austria, France, and the United States. Originally mailed to 2,000 people in more than thirty countries, the Ararats are once more available to readers all around the world!

To buy the book in hard copy, search “Pages from Armenian-Canadian History” on your country’s Amazon site:

• Amazon.ca
• Amazon.com
• etc.

Click here to read it online

Click here to download it

This academic article by our director of research Daniel Ohanian is about the migration of the Georgetown Boys and Girls—children and women who had survived the Armenian Genocide—to Canada. Its full title is “Sympathy and Exclusion: The Migration of Child and Women Survivors of the Armenian Genocide from the Eastern Mediterranean to Canada, 1923–1930.”

This is the summary:

In 1918, some 500,000 Ottoman Armenians found themselves displaced from their homes or living in Muslim households in the Eastern Mediterranean and the South Caucasus. For most, life did not return to normal after WWI. Rather, new wars, war scares, political maneuverings, economic policies, famines, and epidemics during 1918–1930 resulted in a long-term refugee crisis that was responded to by a large number of Armenian and non-Armenian organizations. This article looks at one such response: the humanitarian relocation to Canada of 110 boys and 39 girls and women—all genocide refugees and most of them orphans. It traces how this relocation campaign was realized despite Canadian immigration authorities’ long-standing efforts to keep Asians, the impoverished, and the stateless from entering the country. Breaking with the often simplistic and celebratory tone of the literature on humanitarian aid to Ottoman Armenians, this article discusses how the Canadian fundraising campaigns of 1880–1922 were a liability for this subsequent relocation project, and it pays special attention to the people and ideas that opposed it.

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