PARO
Amplifying Rural Voices
People’s Archive of Rural Ontario (PARO) aims to mobilize and amplify rural voices and stories and to contribute to the revitalization of rural Ontario. It was developed to organize, preserve, and make freely accessible the records and voices of rural Ontarians.
PARO is currently engaged in collecting stories, highlighting personal and community narratives of rural resilience from a broad range of sources to be produced for the archive as text, audio, video, and/or photography.
PARO welcomes submissions from all persons, particularly those who identify as Indigenous, racialized, having disabilities, and from persons of all sexual identities and gender identities.
A Rural Repository
Rural Ontario is not just one thing – one experience, one type of land, one form of community. A farming community within striking distance of Toronto and a First Nations community in Northern Ontario will have very different stories to tell about their experiences of rural life. The People’s Archive of Rural Ontario (PARO) is a living archive of rural Ontario – a widely accessible, ever-growing, online, multimedia repository.
Resources
A diversity of sources for a diversity of stories.
PARO works with a diversity of groups, networks, and organizations that support rural people and communities to document, preserve, and share their stories. Below are some other initiatives and sources relevant to rural stories in Canada and elsewhere.
