Cross-country couch surfing
Ela Kinowska and Peter Sobierajski at the Winterlude Festival in Ottawa
Sometimes, a small moment can inspire a big idea. For instance: One wintry afternoon in 2013, Ela Kinowska came back to her Chelsea, Quebec home and was surprised to find her friend, Peter Sobierajski, lounging in her snowy backyard. He was sitting on a red couch she’d been hoping to buy from him, so she promptly sat down and joined him. The quintessential scene—red on a white backdrop—got the two talking about what it means to be Canadian. Before long, they had invented an ambitious project that would celebrate and document our national identity—and which would ultimately become an official Canada 150 Signature Project.
This year, the Red Couch Tour, produced by Kinowska and Sobierajski’s ELPIO Production company, has invited Canadians from across the country to pause and reflect and talk about what their country means to them. Starting this past March, the tour first visited the northern territories; then, beginning in July, Kinowska and co. travelled from the East to the West Coasts, stopping in nearly 40 cities along the way to chat with Canadians from all walks of life.
“My favourite part, I would say without hesitation, was the northern tour,” says Kinowska, on the phone from Ottawa, with the bulk of the road show’s work now behind her. “It’s such an unexplored part of Canada. It’s so remote that we don’t get there, but it’s worth it in order to understand Canada—the vastness of this country, the richness of the people, the variety, the cultures, especially the Indigenous cultures that are more visible in the North.”
It was in Behchokǫ̀, Northwest Territories, where Kinowska encountered an interview that really stuck with her. Laura Nanooch, who was attending the annual Dene Handgames, spoke of her traditional Woodland Cree First Nations upbringing, her connection to her language and land, and the pride she feels in her community.
“She was talking about how important it is for Aboriginal women to undertake education and to believe in themselves to find their destiny,” explains Kinowska. “When it’s -30°C outside, there is this woman sitting on the red couch, telling what Canada means to her and talking from the Aboriginal perspective about the power of Aboriginal women...It moved me to tears.”
Some interviews were more lighthearted, and a few even featured Canadian celebrities. In hindsight, perhaps most poignant was the impromptu interview the team conducted with John Dunsworth of Trailer Park Boys, shortly before the actor passed away in October. He spoke of his love for summer and how good his country has been to him throughout his 71 years.
“We’d decided to go to the set with no warning. We found out along the way that they were filming in Truro, [Nova Scotia,] so we just crashed the party,” says Kinowska. “The production team pulled out three of the actors to sit on the red couch, and I actually have a picture of John Dunsworth signing the back of it.”
The warm welcome the Red Couch Tour team experienced that day was not unique. One of the lessons the team was most grateful to learn throughout the travelling road show was the hospitality of Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
“There was a lady named Celine who called up before the tour—it was a few days before we hit the road—and said, ‘We would love it if you could come to Argyle, Nova Scotia. You’re welcome to stay at my house, in my yard. I’ll cook for you.’ It was one of the most amazing experiences,” says Kinowska. “That’s what I want to underline, the hospitality of people that received us in their homes. For 60 days we were on the road, so having a home away from home was so precious.”
Of course, a cross-country tour that involves travelling massive distances with a large piece of furniture and production equipment didn’t come without its challenges. The logistics of transporting everything were particularly tough, even on the couch itself: in St. John’s, the team had to stop for emergency repairs to the couch. And in true Canadian fashion, bad weather also delayed their road show. During a VIA Rail journey from Winnipeg to Churchill in March, a blizzard shut down the train tracks, which meant a lot of rerouting on the fly. Connectivity was an issue too—the team relied on Internet connections to post their interviews to social media and communicate—and there are large stretches of Canada that simply have no service.
“A message from me to politicians is to make the Internet highway your priority,” says Kinowska—though it wasn’t her only message to the political sphere. “I regret that the Prime Minister didn’t accept our invite to sit on the couch. People along the way were asking, ‘Will the Prime Minister sit on the couch?’”
Looking back, getting Justin Trudeau on the couch, adjusting the itinerary to be less overwhelming, and utilizing more resources are all aspects of the tour Kinwoska would have changed—but she feels incredibly lucky and humbled to have had the opportunity to mount the Red Couch Tour for the sesquicentennial.
“It meant so much to us to be picked [as a Canada 150 Signature Project] to get to go across the country and create a collective portrait of Canada,” she says. “Me and my partner, Peter, we are immigrants to this country so this project was a way of giving back to this country that embraced us with love and hopes for a better life.”
Though the red couch is done travelling, the stories it has collected along the way will live on. The next phase of Kinowska and Sobierajski’s project is to create a digital portrait of Canada using an interactive map to plot the interviews they conducted during the tour. The map will be hosted at redcouchtour.ca, along with the stories Canadians shared from Iqaluit to Tofino to Labrador—and beyond.
This story first appeared in Passport2017, a Strategic Content Labs and Heritage Canada project.