Memoir company preserves stories for families, seniors and corporations

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They say that in two generations, there will be nobody alive who remembers you at all.

That is, unless your story is documented.

Everyone has a story; be it one of triumph, hardship, perseverance or all these things combined, most people have a history worth preserving.

"Everyone's story is unique, challenging, there's incredibly difficult moments within it, there are incredibly fantastic and exciting and fun moments within it, everybody has those stories, but not everyone knows how to articulate or write them," said Peter O'Brien, president of Thomas Memoirs.

O'Brien's company was launched in 2006 after the Toronto writer was hired by one of his corporate clients to create a memoir as a retirement gift for an employee. Once it was finished, he found that he'd created a product that was in demand.

"I started telling a few people about this idea and every single person said the same thing. 'That is a fantastic idea,'" O'Brien said. "Then the next thing people say is, '...my grandparents have an amazing story of coming to North America, my father has memories of what happened to him in the war, we'd like to record those stories for our grandchildren."

O'Brien does both the personal memoirs of people, as well as corporate histories as a way to preserve their story, as well a marketing tool to tell their stories to potential clients. But he's not limited to those two types of memoirs.

"I'm doing a memoir of an island right now. It's a family island so basically I'm writing the history of this island through the people who own it and through the history of the island."

Depending on the size requested, which O'Brien said can range from 60 to 200 pages, it takes a minimum of six months to produce a memoir or corporate history.

O'Brien said they are crafted through several interviews of the person and other relevant people to the story, e-mails, by integrating other documents or letters as well as photographs or other relevant items to help the story unfold.

This is how the price is determined along with many other variables. O'Brien said it depends on photographs and graphic material included, colour or not, soft or hard bound, how many copies are printed, so it's determined on an individual basis.

For example, 16 pages would cost approximately $2,000 and would include some text and images. Otherwise, it could cost $10,000 and up. But O'Brien said it's tough to put a price on preservation.

Toronto resident Jutta van der Kuijp has no idea how much it cost to produce her father's memoir because her husband surprised her with it for her birthday a few years ago. However, she said, it was the best gift she had ever received.

"He, without my knowledge, had Peter contact my dad and write the memoirs and he gave me the manuscript as my birthday gift," she said.

Her mother had died in 1998, and van der Kuijp said she realized all her mother's family stories were done, too, so it was nice to know her father's life story would be preserved.

"It basically goes from birth up to my mom's passing and what's neat about the style is when I read it, I really hear my dad's voice," she said. "It's not written like great literature, but it's written the way my dad speaks so I can hear his voice and I think it's great for future generations."

Besides stories about how her parents met and her father's career, there is also a section describing the time her dad spent as a prisoner of war in Japanese camps during the Second World War.

And van der Kuijp said the memoir is a great keepsake for herself, her kids and generations to come. She also said it's just as valuable as a video memory would be.

O'Brien said living in an electronic age, a lot of documents that we preserve electronically on our computers, DVDs and CDs will not be around in 30 or 40 years as technology changes.

"This is not a document that will disintegrate after five years, it's a permanent document," he said. "These books are printed on acid-free paper, well bound, well produced and will be around 300 years from now, and that's not the case with a lot of electronic ways to preserve our stories."

O'Brien said he's done memoirs for people ranging in age from 40 to 85, and said it would be a great gift for Mother's Day, Father's Day, anniversaries or any special occasions.

For more information visit www.thomasmemoirs.com.