World War 1
In English 9 we have been studying WW1 and the question of “How Did World War One impact Canada’s identity?” This question is our driving question for this section on WW1, and I would like to break it down. 
Canada is its own country, now, but not back in 1914, which doesn’t seem like that long ago, but a lot has happened in the last 100 years! Canada was forced to send troops to help the British when they entered the war, because we were just part of there largely expanding country. (There was a saying back before the war when Britain owned so much land, and it was, “the sun never sets on the British Empire.” ) so we sent a large amount of troops, but Canada only consisted of 4 provinces back then, and all 4 of those Provence’s could fit inside one of the provinces now, they were so tiny, so the war took a lot of our population. Woman and men. After the war was over the British thanked us for our help in the battles, and they granted us separation from the country, well mostly Queen Elizabeth is still our queen! Anyways, I am going to return to this question at the bottom of this post, and give a fuller answer, but I must get on with the critical information, so I would like to share with you my process of understanding WW1, and traveling to Ottawa, to the creation of my comic, and what it means, so sit back and relax becuase I feel like this blog post might be quite large.
We started our research on WW1 with an website called Shattered Ground. Shattered Ground is a comic strip based around the stories a young boy is digging up about his grand father in WW1. The young boy uncovers a lot about the camps, the boat trip, the frontlines, the friendship, the hardship, and about the pain that was inflicted upon his grandfather. Shattered ground was a unique way to learn about WW1, and I liked how hands on it was. It kept the reader interested with different things that they had to find throughout the chapter, and this is where the inspiration for our own comic strip really started for me.
Before Spring Break, we had been given the task of reading one of these four books for break. You could read, War Horse,Generals Die In Bed, and a few others
. I choose War Horse, because Ms. Maxwell strongly recommended it and it had the least amount of words. I throughly enjoyed it and it was a nice easy read, which was perfect for the few minutes I would read on the break. ( I read the whole book on the plane, which makes sense if your spending 30 hours on planes!) At the time reading War Horse was not something I was interested in. I thought that it would never help me with anything but I could not be more wrong. Just having the story behind me going into the comic strip project I felt educated, becuase it gave me the backround knowledge that I needed to start my research. I guess this is the actual start of our WW1 section!
Ottawa, oh Ottawa.
My dear PLP friends and I got to travel to Ottawa recently and take our understanding of WW1 to the next level. We thought we had a good handle on the war and what happened, but we were missing the actual stories from the veterans and from the museums.
I never actually told you why we were going to ottawa in the first place, so I will. It was Vimy week at Encounters With Canada, and so it fit perfectly with our learning. Now you might be wondering what “Vimy Week” is, well its a week dedicated to learning about WW1, but mainly the battle of Vimy Ridge. Vimy Ride was a ridge that the Germans had control of during the last stretch of WW1, the British, the french, and the Russians had all tried and failed to take control of the ridge, but it was only when the Canadians stepped up, that the ridge fell under the Allied territory. Now this was big for Canada, but it was major because this was the first time all of the Canadian troops were fighting all together, and under the command of a Canadian officer.
Encounters played a huge role in the Comic Strip for me because I learned so much about the WW1 soldiers there, that when I started to to the research I allready had ideas, and facts about the soldiers and conditions, etc. I learned so much that week, and met a few knew people who I will stay in touch with for the rest of my life.
Now when we returned from Ottawa, it was directly to work, we needed a comic, and we needed one before May 9th, so that meant a lot of hard work went onto these comic and I think you could tell if you looked! The graphic novels were a unique way to show the grade sevens at Cove Cliff what we had learned in our studies, and this is why we needed them done by May 9th. The graphic novels were comprised of a whole bunch of 2-3 page comics on topics like, Nurses in WW1, 
The Battle of Passchendaele,
The battle of Vimy Ridge,
Shell Shock, and many more. We decided to do a comic book because we wanted it to be something that had the kids interested, and so we began the project.
There were many topics to choose from, but none really interested me. I decided to pursue my own topic, which was “The Disappearing Soldiers.” The Disappearing Soldiers were the soldiers who had died in battle, helping soldiers, or even in the war effort.
16 million people died in the war, and of the 10 million military personnel who died, 6 million were lost, and then presumed dead. This is so important to my topic, because it shows that so many soldiers were literally lost to the war. Now you might be wondering what would have to happen to loose 6 million soldiers, well I’m here to answer that question.
World War 1 was not pretty. WW1 was not at all like the wars that we have experienced recently. You could not just sit back in your reclining chair, threatening other country’s with nuclear bombs, from behind a screen. 
You had to be face to face with the enemy, and since there was so much man to man battling there was so many deaths. Deaths could come from almost anything in WW1. Of corse the war was number one, but soldiers died from drowning in the mud,
rats, disease, cold weather, and to go back to my point above, it was not pretty. Now if you drowned in the mud, I would like to stress that no one would even attempt to save you. Drowning in the mud was one of the many causes of missing soldiers. Another would be un proper burials. It would be a good start to discuss proper burials, so I’ll address that. A proper burial is equipped with a coffin, a tombstone, a place in a cemetery, maybe even a funeral.
A burial also deserves respect, peace and support. Now the men on the front lines did not have all these things. This is why un proper burials are such a huge part of missing soldiers. These soldiers would be buried with other soldiers, they would be buried in ramshackle places, they would be buried in older trenches, and so a lot of them went “missing.” A proper burial in the war was still different from a proper burial at home. Now you might be wondering how soldiers could tell the dead soldiers apart, and thats where Dog Tags come in. A soldiers dog take was 2 chips that they would wear around their neck, ankle, wrist, and even in there pocket.
On these chips was information about who the person who had passed such as, name, regiment, company or corps. One of these chips would stay on them forever, where as the other would be taken in the case of death. If and when a soldier died, the army would take there chip, and send it off to the men and woman who wrote out the death slips. These death slips were like index cards, but were filled with information like, where they had died, when they had died, what battle they were fighting at the time, and a bit more. These cards would be sent out to the family’s of the soldier who passed, to inform them of there loss.
After the war had ended many soldiers got stuck with he unfortunate task, of looking for these soldiers. They would do this by, revisiting the battle fields, and looking for man made holes, grass that was growing greener than the rest, a piece of clothing, or the actual smell of death.
If they found someone they would try to find there dog tags and then transfer them to a proper cemetery, and the same would go for the soldiers they found without dog tags, just they would have “known only to god” etched on there tombstone.
may 9th rolled around, and I had totally forgotten until we were exiting the building and I kept asking “where are we going?”, and some one (annoyed) replayed “covecliff, were you not paying attention?”, and to that I had to say no, but I was paying attention from that point onwards! We walked to cove cliff with only our IPads to show the kids our comics. We were not able to print off enough copies to make enough for each person to show there grade 7 buddies, becuase it cost $50 to make one! So we made only one in colour, and gave the black and white copy to cove cliff, oh well, at least they got one! We got to pick our buddies and it ended up being one grade nine to around 4 grade sevens, and so it got pretty chaotic. I had my brother and 3 of his friends and let me say, I don’t know if they heard a single thing I was talking about!
I had a blast with them, and tried my very hardest to make them understand my comic. When it was time to switch I got paired up with 4 girls, and well lets just say it was relaxing! Afterwards I went to go and check on my brother and saw that they were just as bad with the next partner! All in all I found it really rewarding to use all the information that we had learned about our independent topics, and share it with these young kids, and so I had a thought. I was wondering if these kids would actually remember this stuff when it came time to know it in grade 9, and so who better to ask than my brother Tom.
A: So tom did you enjoy the WW1 comic that the grade nines and I put together?
T: Yes
A: What did you learn from my section of the comic?
T: There was lots of people in the war, I learned about the lost soldiers, and how they make dog tags in case they loose them, and how after the war people were still trying to find the lost soldiers.
A: What did you learn from other peoples sections?
T: People could drown in the mud, and how 2 big cargo ships collided and with bombs and then it exploded in 12 km every way, and not many people survived.
A: Do you think this information will stay with you till grade nine when you learn this stuff?
T: Yeah
A: Did you know about these topics before we showed up?
T: No
A: If you were to change one thing about our projects what would it be?
T: Nothing
A: Thank you Tom for helping me with this interview.
T: Your welcome and your welcome
So I guess well just have to hope that his information stays with the kids, and that hey all had as good of a time as Tom!
Before I end this blog post, I have to finish my answer to the driving question for this project, which was Hw Did WW1 Impact Canadas Identity. I think Canadas identity was throughly separated from the one they entered with, after the war. Canada was the country that followed in England’s footsteps and was just an extension of one of the most advanced country’s in the world fro there time. It was great to start, for some people (the English) the First Nation people that lived here were not pleased with the English, but I think the war helped to bring peace to this. We became our own independent people and had our own indepentant government, and laws. So we were able to treat, and control ourselves they way we needed to. And this may have never happened if it hadn’t been for the war. Of corse the negatives way out way the positives in this case, but to be able to find the positives, is a positive in itself.
Thank you for take it the time to read this and I hope you have an enjoyable rest of you day
adlih.
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