A proud granddaughter

As the Sault enjoys this year's Passport to Unity festival May 1 to May 3, work performed at one of last year's Passport to Unity workshops has made it online.

Last year, a group of people who immigrated to Canada and made Sault Ste. Marie their home shared their stories at a PTU Pier 21 workshop through photographs, audio and video recordings.

Those stories have been transferred to digital video format and uploaded to the PTU link on the Sault Community Career Centre's website

At least one of the videos has also been uploaded to play on the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 website.

One of the videos tells the story of Sault Ste. Marie's Angelo Rosset.

"Coincidentally, he is my grandfather," said Alisha Rosset, Sault Community and Career Centre event specialist.

"I'm proud, it's awesome," Rosset said, speaking to SooToday.

"I'm so excited for him.  Everything he did for our family, everything he did was such an accomplishment, I'm so proud as a granddaughter, my own success stems from him."

Experts from the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia visited the Sault during last year's PTU to help compile the information for the videos, after being invited here by event organizers Rosset and Duane Moleni.

"They (Pier 21 staff and those who shared their immigration stories with them) were overjoyed and ecstatic about the workshop, it was like a match made in heaven," Rosset said.

There are no Pier 21 workshops in this year's PTU because museum staff are opening a new exhibit two weeks from now, however Rosset said "we're going to see what we can do to get them involved in Passport (next year), absolutely."

Pier 21 was the landing point for many immigrants to Canada from 1928 to 1971, in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

In 1999, the former ‘immigration shed’ became a museum dedicated to telling the story of immigration to Canada in those years, and became an official National Museum of Canada in 2011.

A list of PTU events, from May 1 to May 3, can be found on the Sault Community Career Centre website.