As we’re packing up the leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner, many of us are thinking about what we're grateful for. For me, this typically means looking back on memories I’ve made with my children, family and friends. I also acknowledge the career milestones and successes I’ve achieved throughout the year.
Over the last decade, I’ve been reflecting more and more on how lucky I am to live in Canada and on the time I’ve had with my parents, who are both still in good health in their mid-eighties. I still hear new stories all the time from their youth—about how their parents came to Canada from Greek Macedonia in the 1920s, the work they did, and the businesses they started. There are stories of poverty, fear, sadness and adversity. There are others of joy, courage and success. I come from a long line of hard-working individuals, with a strong commitment to giving their children and grandchildren better lives.
While I love hearing these stories, what has always worried me is that they weren’t documented. They were all shared orally over a coffee or meal. I wanted to record them, write them down somewhere. But I was too busy running my PR agency and raising my kids, and just didn’t know how. So I never got around to it.
That was my motivation for creating CONTEXT Studios, which is dedicated to providing the service I’ve wished for all these years: capturing and sharing anybody’s story and legacy in high-end film and podcast documentaries.
Capturing Legacies Doesn’t Have to Be Difficult
I know I’m not alone in worrying about preserving my family’s legacy. A lot of us have entertained the idea of taking on this kind of project—but we almost never follow through, because we assume it has to be a massive undertaking.
Most often, when people think about trying to document somebody else’s life story, they typically think to do it in writing. The most ambitious try to write a book—a task that is typically abandoned, because of the time and effort involved.
But penning a person’s biography isn’t the only way to keep their memory alive. In today’s technological age, we have so many options at our fingertips for creating a lasting impression of a person, from photos and videos to audio recordings. And even more importantly, legacy preservation doesn’t have to be a huge, time-consuming project. At the end of the day, all that really matters is creating materials that really capture somebody’s essence, and storing them in one place where you’ll easily be able to find them later.
Personally, my favourite option for legacy preservation is documentary. That might sound intimidating, but this format can come together more quickly than you may think, with amazing payoff. A documentary brings a person to life in 3D, capturing their voice, their face, their emotions, even their jokes, allowing future generations to get to know and feel a personal connection with previous ones. This format provides space to delve into someone’s joys, their successes, their disappointments and even the obstacles they've overcome, documenting the full context of their life or business. By the way, this is what we do at CONTEXT: we spend a single day with our clients in the places that matter to them (whether that’s their home, their cottage, or their office) and we talk to them and their families about their lives, all while recording a beautiful film or podcast.
But if you’re not quite ready to jump into a full documentary project, you can start recording your family’s story in smaller pieces. Make a point of taking videos of your loved ones—when you’re together at family gatherings, when they’re in their element (why not get a photo of Grandma doing her beloved daily crossword puzzle?), or even just as they go about their day-to-day lives. If your dad starts telling a story from the Old Country over coffee, ask if you can whip out your phone and record it.
Whenever you feel like you’re witnessing a precious moment with this person, take some small action to document it. Just make sure to save all those recordings together in one place, like a folder on a Google Drive, so that you’re able to easily get back to them later. It might not feel like much at the time, but you’ll be so glad to have these materials down the road when they’re gone.
Everyone Has a Story to Tell
Here’s another thing about legacy preservation: it’s incredibly rewarding. Launching CONTEXT has been one of the most incredible experiences of my life. It’s a privilege to bring somebody else’s stories to life, whether we’re documenting one person’s life story, a family’s business legacy, or the entrepreneurial journey behind a successful business as I get to see entire life stories, entrepreneurial journeys and family business legacies come to life.
Clients tell us this new way of keeping their (and their loved ones’) legacy alive gives them a personal, lasting way to be remembered that goes well beyond a two-dimensional family tree or photo album, which don’t tell a story or bring someone’s personality to life. As I was inventing this concept and developing a prototype, I convinced my parents to be the subjects of the pilot. While they love taking and being in family photos, they have been highly resistant to being videotaped for as long as I can remember. Not to mention they had a hard time understanding what I was doing, because this format simply didn’t exist for most of their lives. But once they saw the result, they understood how it would be used and saw how valuable it was—and they’re both glad and relieved they did it.
Documenting a Legacy as Part of End of Life Planning
The work that Viive does—encouraging people to make Aging & End of Life part of their everyday conversations—strikes a deep chord with me. My family has talked about death, dying and planning for it as long as I can remember. In 1965 my mother’s mother, Margaret Tamo, bought 54 plots in Toronto’s Prospect Cemetery to make sure her three children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren were taken care of, as well as for extended family and neighbours. She would sell them plots at cost as needed so that everyone could be together.
But I know this is not always the case. Many people are afraid to face the idea that they won’t be around forever. But the more we can acknowledge this fact of life, the better we can prepare for it.
As you set out to create your own Aging & End of Life Plan, I encourage you to make capturing your life story all in one place an integral part of that process. Whether you’re preserving a family business legacy, an entrepreneurial journey or an individual life story, there’s no better medium than a high-quality documentary to bring those stories to life in a way that will resonate, engage and educate for generations to come.
