Concordia University history professor Ronald Rudin is using digital storytelling to spread the voices of people who in 1969 were displaced from the area that became Kouchibouguac National Park in New Brunswick.

Rudin created a website — Returning the Voices to Kouchibouguac National Park — in conjunction with Montreal-based multimedia producer Philip Licht. The site includes twenty-six intimate video testimonies plus maps, texts, and illustrations inspired by the experiences of the more than 1,200 people who were forced to leave their homes and livelihoods nearly half a century ago.

"We were trying as much as we could to get [the participants] to narrate the story about what their lives were before. We tried to play off landscape that was destroyed against the one that exists," said Rudin.

His favourite video is the one where Norma Doucet tells her story. “The thing about Norma is that she’s all dressed up, and she’s wearing this nicely tailored suit and a necklace,” Rudin noted. "This is a very big event to get to tell her parents' story."

Watch Norma Doucet below.