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Victoria Abboud and her father Moe AbboudVictoria Abboud and her father Moe Abboud visited his hometown of Joub Jannine, Lebanon in June 2022.

Professor's project to highlight local migrant experience

A UWindsor professor is delving into the past to explore her family’s heritage through a series of interviews that capture the migration stories of individuals in the local Lebanese community.

Victoria Abboud, an instructor, author, and alumna (BSc 2000, BA 2001), received a $5,000 grant from the City of Windsor toward her project Transplanting Cedars: Migration Stories from Lebanese Elders.

“This project has been years in the making. I’ve always had an interest in family history and genealogy — we’re Lebanese on my dad’s side — so it’s been a lifelong journey of exploring both the history of our family and the broader community,” Dr. Abboud said.

“It began with me writing about family, community and life in Lebanon. We still have family, friends, and a community in our village that we visit whenever possible. I started sharing these stories with my dad, and he became really interested, reflecting on his own experiences. And I realized there are some significant migration stories here.”

For this project, Abboud will interview eight participants on video to create a collection of oral histories, which will inform a corresponding book about their experiences migrating to Canada in the 1960s and 1970s.

“I noticed there was something significant about this generation of Lebanese that we don’t see represented much — what they’ve contributed to the region and how important they’ve been to the Windsor community,” Abboud explained.

“I started talking with them to collect a few stories, and it’s become something they want to share. I think we have a real opportunity to learn from them and question what it means to straddle two different communities and cultures, even within Canada. This project will hopefully help me do that.”

Abboud’s first interview was with her father, Mounib Abboud (known to many friends as “Uncle Moe”). While he shared a story she had heard before, seeing him on video as he recalled the day he left Lebanon in 1965 believing he’d never return, struck a different chord.

Just weeks before the civil war broke out in 1975, Moe had returned to Lebanon from Canada to visit family, not knowing the 15-year war was about to start.  They lived in a village away from direct conflict, but they knew it was time to leave — and that meant travelling through Beirut to reach the airport.

On the way, street-level fighting had begun. A sniper shot out one of the car’s tires in what Abboud described as “a message.” The car stopped, and the family ran into a nearby shop to hide until it they could leave.

“Hearing it in an interview and trying to engage the story from a more objective lens was suddenly shocking,” Abboud said. “It had been a family story, but suddenly it became this life-or-death moment at the start of a war that millions have experienced. It made me realize, ‘This is something I have to do,’ and learn what other folks experienced during this time.”

This is far from Abboud’s first project delving into her Lebanese heritage and migration history. She has written creative non-fiction, articles, and a scholarly publication titled '(Trans)Planting Cedars: Seeking Identity, Nationality and Culture in the Lebanese Diaspora' in Arab Voices in Diaspora: Critical Perspectives on Anglophone Arab Literature. This work aligns with her most recent project and others that examine how individuals in Canada navigate a sense of belonging within their communities.

However, as a writer, this is her first experience behind a camera to incorporate video documentation of the participants' narratives.

“I’m not expecting to become a documentarian, I just really want to capture the videos as part of family and community history. Archivists at the Leddy Library have agreed that the videos and images I collect can be housed at the university archives. It seems they don’t currently have a collection from the region’s Lebanese community.  I want the families and the interviewees to have these important family histories,” Abboud said.

Abboud is one of 15 recipients awarded funding in the second round of the City of Windsor’s Arts, Culture and Heritage Fund, which allocated $59,000 to support local arts, culture, and heritage projects.

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