Bound to Go Down in History
Buffs make a career out of collecting people's stories
By Lorne Blumer
The National Post, April 21, 2005
"I like to talk about myself," Audrey Black Honey admits.
"Thank you," her daughter, Mary Ann Archer, replies. "You said it, I didn't."
Teasing aside, Archer's not complaining. She values the stories of her vivacious 90-year-old mother so much that she hired personal historian Lindsay Hall to put them in a book.
Personal history is a fledgling profession in which a paid interviewer/editor such as Hall gathers the stories of individuals, families and communities into bound form. The first-person narratives are often interwoven with photographs, newspaper clippings and letters home. Hall is one of 30 Canadian members of the 400-strong Association of Personal Historians.
On a recent Monday afternoon, time has seemingly stopped at Honey's Christie Gardens apartment, as she, Archer and Hall relive the experience of creating Honey's 50-page book. It is definitely not a Hallmark card. For one thing, Honey and Archer are remarkably candid with each other. ("I'm coming to your house to die," Honey tells her daughter at one point.) For another, many of the memories Honey chose to chronicle were uneasy ones. Hers has been "a hard story," she says. "Whose hasn't?"
So when Archer decided to have her mother's life recorded, she was discerning about whom she would hire. She scoured the Web and was drawn to Hall's company, StoryMatters.
"It was seeing a picture of someone who had white hair," jokes Hall, 60, who also teaches yoga and runs a local referral service for community health centres.
"The moment I opened the door and saw you," Archer tells her, "I went, 'Yes. I like this woman.' "
The plan was for Hall and Honey to meet for three 90-minute interviews from which the book would be crafted. But how would Honey respond to her? Though she was eager to pass on her legacy to her children and grandchildren, she wasn't prepared to tell her stories to just anyone.
"I think I have a gift for getting along with people and engaging them," Hall says. Still, there was no guarantee Honey would be one of them.
They needn't have worried. "From the very beginning, I was delighted," Honey says. "I felt that she got me. Of course, how can you not be delighted when someone really gets you?"
Honey soon poured forth with stories of a loving but complicated relationship with a distant father, of being the only woman at the University of Alberta's theological college, of forgoing ordination in favour of marriage to her husband, Floyd. Honey accompanied him to China, where she raised their three daughters, often wondering how good a mother she was. She later entered a phase of deep self-analysis, eventually going on to become a psychotherapist.
"Two hours later," Hall says, "I knew more about Audrey than most people in the world do, including, in some cases, her kids. And that, to me, is such an honour, that someone will tell me those kinds of things."
Over time, though, the meetings had to stop. Hall bills by the hour (although she often turns off the clock), and personal history is highly labour-intensive. For every hour spent doing interviews, another five are spent transcribing them. Then there's editing, adding photographs and other visuals, choosing paper and, sometimes,working with bookbinders.
"Nobody's ever finished," Hall says. "How can you talk about your whole life in four or five hours? I try to connect it and distill it."
Despite these limitations, the core story Hall recorded is one all three women are happy with.
"For me, it was very powerful," Archer says, adding that the book helped her understand her mother on a more visceral level. "I came away feeling, 'My God, this woman is a wise woman, someone who had a story to tell.' "
Hall acknowledges that personal history is not for everyone. "It's not that everybody doesn't have stories and an interesting life. They do," she says. "But not everybody's prepared to talk about it. Why pay to torture yourself?"
But for most, it's no burden at all. "It's been a wonderful experience talking about myself," Honey says. "When can we do this again?"
