Series S00937 - Javeed family videos

Series consists of digitized home movies documenting an Indian family in Canada communicating via video letters to family in India. Video letters include Indian nursery rhymes, biryani songs, and footage of children practicing Urdu and memorizing the Quran in Arabic.

Project and donor contributed description follows: "In the Javeed family’s apartment in Scarborough ON, two boys aged between 3 and 7 create a video letters to their grandmother who resides overseas in India. Both boys are born and live in Canada. The videos document shifts in communication technologies, at a time prior to the use of communication apps like WhatsApp, used to keep in touch with family. Scarborough was quite diverse by the early 2000s, and the boys generally felt connected to their peers, although their mother remembers they had experienced racism and some issues at school. She attests that they grew up differently than she did as a first generation immigrant, wherein she felt like an outsider in Toronto in the early eighties. The family had a lot of discussions as they were growing up about these issues, and ensured the boys were familiar with current affairs."