Director Dana Inkster experienced the immigration situation and the strikes that resulted when she spent 24 Days in Brooks
The story is one that has been played out thousands of times in Canada — but perhaps never on such a large scale and in so short a time. Immigrants have been moving here since long before Canada even had a name, and though the races and religions have varied throughout time, their stories and struggles all have similarities and their courage and optimism are what helps Canada continue to thrive.
Director Dana Inkster spent 24 days in the city of Brooks, Alberta and came away with a very insightful glimpse into the lives of its residents. Inkster, who moved to Lethbridge from Montreal in 2005, says that the mass immigration in Brooks, largely fuelled by Alberta’s boom and a labour shortage at Lakeside Packers meat plant, was a natural attraction for her. As a black woman in Canada, she has always been “quite invested in diversity,” and she has found that when it comes to issues of racism and immigration, often “the concerns (of the people) are the same across the board.”
Her documentary, 24 Days in Brooks, is a sincere look into the lives of recent immigrants to Brooks, the opinions of the townspeople and mayor, and the labour disputes at Lakeside Packers, which is where most of the immigrants work. A union comes in to represent the workers who feel their voices aren’t being heard, eventually leading to a strike.
Brooks was facing what Inkster saw as one of Canada’s “immigration waves,” largely because of the many entry-level, unskilled labour jobs available at Lakeside Packers. Her movie was meant to document this rapid growth. She did not plan, however, for the strike to commence during her time there, but she seized the opportunity to get “behind the headlines” of what she calls “the news items that were the strike.”
While Inkster did not want the strike to overshadow the stories of the people, what she manages to expose are beautifully telling discussions that uncover the struggle as well as the heart of the African immigrants she follows. As Inkster observes, “people that come here, come with hope,” and the people she interviews serve as a testament to the power of that hope. Paired with hard work, it is often all they need to be successful. While Inkster “felt it was important to not pretend (she) had any answers,” she sees “reliance and survival” as defining characteristics of many of those she interviewed.
At one point in the documentary, the mayor of Brooks states that without the immigrants coming into Canada, we would have no way to sustain our job market or our country’s economic welfare. This is a point that sees many immigrants and refugees coming to Canada for work — and then working to pay off the loans the Canadian government gave them to get here. Any resistance in Brooks seems to have died down near the end of the film, with all sides of the labour dispute wanting “dignity and respect” both as workers and as human beings — values which speak to the heart of our needs as humans.
Inkster’s overall opinion of Brooks is that the town has done very well dealing diplomatically and calmly with integrating recent immigrants into the fabric of the local culture — albeit with a few hiccoughs along the way. The multicultural landscape that exists in Brooks became that way very quickly — causing difficulties for the immigrants and for the town and leading to racism, which she states is “often a handy way to display a resistance to change.” Inkster also feels that Brooks would do well to serve as a model for other urban centres in Canada trying to cope with immigration issues.
Her refreshing and optimistic take on the situation in Brooks provides a nonpartisan view of the situation. Her film is exactly what it claims to be — a document of what Inkster observed during her 24 days in Brooks.
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