Vancouver 1987
Jul 13, 07:06 AM
I migrated from Stockholm, Sweden to Vancouver, BC, Canada in 1987. The cities are approximately the same size and are located on the same latitude. I was somehow expecting something similar to what I was used to. I was wrong.
The first shock was the sound of the city of Vancouver. The noise bouncing between glass clad skyscrapers was, in my ears, extreme. And it went on around the clock. Traffic, human interaction, sirens. All very, very loud. I recorded it and sent cassettes to my friends in Sweden for evidence. Stockholm was, and still is, a comparatively quiet city with few high-rises.
I was also very much taken by the abrupt advertising on the radio (I did not have a TV). It all sounded so North American. At the time, Swedish public television and radio had monopoly and allowed no advertising. I had grown up not knowing what it meant to have the constant drone of commercials in my life. So, yes, it was kind of a culture shock.
I recently found some recordings I made in 1987, when I was still amazed by the sound of the radio in my new homeland. Hearing it throws me right back to being this newbie in a strange place. A decade later, I would return to Sweden only to find that as of 1993, advertising was allowed and sounded quite similar to that I heard in Canada. That too, was a bit of a culture shock.
My sound is a time stamp of the Academy awards of 1987 and the Olympic games in Calgary 1988. I edited out the music for copyright reasons.
Recorded in Vancouver by Eva Q Månsson.
Part of the Migration Sounds project, the world’s first collection of the sounds of human migration.
For more information and to explore the project, see https://www.citiesandmemory.com/migration
The first shock was the sound of the city of Vancouver. The noise bouncing between glass clad skyscrapers was, in my ears, extreme. And it went on around the clock. Traffic, human interaction, sirens. All very, very loud. I recorded it and sent cassettes to my friends in Sweden for evidence. Stockholm was, and still is, a comparatively quiet city with few high-rises.
I was also very much taken by the abrupt advertising on the radio (I did not have a TV). It all sounded so North American. At the time, Swedish public television and radio had monopoly and allowed no advertising. I had grown up not knowing what it meant to have the constant drone of commercials in my life. So, yes, it was kind of a culture shock.
I recently found some recordings I made in 1987, when I was still amazed by the sound of the radio in my new homeland. Hearing it throws me right back to being this newbie in a strange place. A decade later, I would return to Sweden only to find that as of 1993, advertising was allowed and sounded quite similar to that I heard in Canada. That too, was a bit of a culture shock.
My sound is a time stamp of the Academy awards of 1987 and the Olympic games in Calgary 1988. I edited out the music for copyright reasons.
Recorded in Vancouver by Eva Q Månsson.
Part of the Migration Sounds project, the world’s first collection of the sounds of human migration.
For more information and to explore the project, see https://www.citiesandmemory.com/migration