Tale of a Town storymobile harvesting history of downtown Sudbury

A storymobile has parked itself in downtown Sudbury.

A media project called The Tale of a Town is travelling across Canada in a mobile recording studio, collecting stories and memories of downtowns across the country.

Charles Ketchabaw, the managing director of theToronto-based theatre and media company FIXTPOINT whichis behind the project,said the goal isto preserve and revivedowntownsamidst thedegradationof many city cores in Canada.

"We saw a problem that these things were disappearing and nobody was trying to catalogue, or recall, or record them," he said.

"We pull up on mainstreets big and small and park our little storymobiles and set up some microphones and invite people in to talk about what they remember about their main streets and downtowns."

The storymobile will be in Sudbury all week collecting stories, with some to be presentedto the public on May 29, but there's no date or time set for that yet.

The storymobile will then head outto collect stories in North Bay, Cochrane, Timmins, Kirkland Lakeand Sault Ste.Marie.

The group will then produce a piece about downtowns of northern Ontario, with a specific focus on Francophone stories in the north.

After three years of collecting stories, they will be used to makeinteractive maps, podcasts and plays, all in commemoration of Canada's 150th birthdayin 2017. Some of them will be gathered on the Tale of the Town story portal.