Clarence Brazier could have gone his entire life without being able to decipher words on a page. Instead, under the wing of his daughter Doris Villemaire, he learned to read at 93 and became an ambassador for literacy until he died at age 105.
Brazier had to leave school to help on the family farm after his father became blind, says Villemaire, and for decades Clarence was embarrassed and humiliated and had to quit many jobs when it was discovered that he couldn’t read.
It sounds like an issue from another time and one that would be limited to adults from older generations who, like Clarence, may have found themselves in circumstances that curtailed their education. In our fast-paced, digital world, how could any younger adult be illiterate? But the statistics are staggering.
An estimated 48.5 per cent of Canadian adults between the ages of 16 and 65 have low literacy skills – 16.5 per cent have only basic skills or less, while another 32 per cent fall below what is considered an adequate level for today’s digital world (Skills in Canada report, 2012). How could those people have fallen through the cracks? That’s what filmmaker Virginia Hastings hopes to discover and is seeking adult learners who are taking their first steps to gain literacy skills.
Hastings says the idea evolved from Brazier’s story. She hopes to explore where adult learners’ challenges have come from – they may have had to leave school to work on a farm or in a mine, they may have had an accident that caused them to lose their literacy skills, they may have struggled in a school system that didn’t meet their needs.
She also wants to shine a light on the stigma around literacy challenges, and people’s biases about them.
I find it fascinating how ignorant people are to issues that exist in their own backyard. This isn’t an issue just for third world countries, or for people who are poor, or who are lazy. Just the stigma of where and why people think literacy issues and challenges exist in the first place, how people in developed countries don’t think we have these issues.
The film will portray these adult learners in an empowering role. “I want people to leave the theatre thinking, ‘I had no idea this was important, that I should care, that I should donate my time, my money.’ I want people to have an aha moment that these challenges are in our country and why.”
Hastings says she wants to find someone who will let her follow their journey and to film them “having those wow moments as they figure out how to do something they haven’t been able to do. Everyone is worried how they will be portrayed (in films like these) and that they will be made fun of, but this is a film that, ideally, will inspire people who are having challenges with their own journey of reading that they can do it too. And not just with reading – whatever the challenge is in your life.”
If you know a beginning adult learner who would be willing to be interviewed, contact Virginia Hastings at 705-349-3030.
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