My grandmother taught me pride in who I am, and the importance in learning from our history. She taught me there is a value in knowing where you are from and learning the stories of where you live. For my grandmother, that started with reading Magic for Marigold (1929) and became championing the fight for Canadian Literature through her career as a Canadian Literature professor and Canadian biographer. 

This feature documentary is about learning my grandmother’s story and craft, and letting it become a roadmap for my future and my storytelling. As a filmmaker, I have fallen in love with Canadian stories. I have worked the last 10 years in the Vancouver film industry in various positions, and throughout it, I have learned how to be a cinematographer and cam op, but more importantly, I have learned how much I love telling Canadian stories, and how complicated it is to define what it means to be Canadian. I recently worked on NiiMisSak (2024) and it was such a clear telling of the value of stories from the places we know and live in. Projects like this also make clear how Canadian Identity is so much more than the “Canadian Mosaic” our national identity brags of. 

The mosaic concept of the 20th century gave us the idea that we as a country are powerful and superior to the USA because we have the ability to integrate many different immigrant cultures. Immigrant cultures being the key part, our Canadian history means acceptance of many different European cultures, and complete erasure of the indigenous cultures predating Canada. My family is a complete mix of cultures, and has to come to terms with our complacent place in Canada’s history on this land. How do we find a sense of being Canadian within this? 

Through this film, I will look for answers of how to be Canadian. Along the way, I will learn how to interview, craft and edit a biography, but translate it into the 21st century medium of documentary. My grandmother and I can unravel the parallels in our work, from our determination, to the sexism we fight, to our love of sharing stories. We will use this space and conversation to discuss being Canadian, and what that means in this age, and in the prime of my grandmother’s career. 

Dr. Sandra Djwa CM, FRSC, Ph.D has spent her life writing, teaching, studying and championing Canadian Literature. Starting in the 1970s as an associate professor, my grandmother was a part of the Canadian Literature wave  that swept the Canadian academic sphere in the 70s and 80s. She was one of the few women teaching, and one of the few professors pushing for Canadian Literature to share the space dominated by American and English Literature. To me, her fight for Canadian Literature, and her fight for women means she is both a Canadianist and a feminist. Yet, in my grandmother’s words, she is a Canadianist, and not a feminist. The feminists were the bra burning fringe believers, and she was quite comfortably in the middle of society.

My grandparents moved to BC from Newfoundland and Indonesia, respectively. My grandfather was Chinese-Indonesian and my grandmother a Newfoundlander. My grandmother’s side of the family have been in Newfoundland since the 1700s, but Newfoundland as a province is younger than she is. Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949, the year my grandmother turned 10. Meaning she grew up outside of Canada, and when my grandparents met, they were both experiencing a form of immigrant life in Canada. My grandfather moved to Canada in the 1950s to be one of the first Indonesian men to get their engineering degree at the University of British Columbia. He was expected to return to Indonesia and use his degree to support his family, but a call from his mom back home had him and his new bride staying in Canada. Chinese Indonesian tensions had heated up in the 1960s and it became significantly less safe for our family to live in Indonesia. They stayed in Vancouver, and built a family. 

By the time my sister and I came along, our family tree was a jigsaw puzzle of history. Trying to untangle this puzzle, I clung to the idea of being Canadian, freeing myself from arguments and explanations over my heritage. I was taught to be proud of my Chinese-Indonesian heritage and got used to the shocked expressions on people’s faces when I explained the “white” girl they are talking to has a Chinese-Indonesian name and heritage. To find the line of being proud of who you are, and not represent a distant culture is complicated. I grew up in Vancouver, white presenting and culturally Western. The only identity I know how to speak to is being Canadian. My identity is as much a patchwork in progress as our country’s cultural identity.