PLP has begun and I can’t believe this is only my first post. Mr. Hughes told me during the normal year we would be somewhere in January now, so having to do one post is incredible, they will be much more frequent now. In english we have created a pamphlet and a google map as part of our historical walking tour of deep cove.
The premise for the project was to answer the driving question “How can we as historians uncover and share stories about our community?” The final product was planned to be a historical walking tour, with plaques and a livestream of us taking the tour. COVID set up many barriers in this project which ended up altering our final project, causing us to add the map and remove the plaques. So let me explain this project.
Firstly, our teacher Ms. Maxwell took a shot in the dark and reached out to the Deep Cove Heritage Society (DCHS), and got a response from a man named Jim. Ms. Maxwell ended up being the first person to contact the DCHS from Seycove ever, and they were so excited to share their resources with us. We had previously done some research about the history of the cove and the Seymour area with help from the DCHS published books, “Echoes Across The Inlet,” and “Echoes Across Seymour,”
which helped us grasp an understanding of the historical past of each of our locations. We used this information to make a timeline highlighting certain events and dates the struck us as important from each chapter of both books (class A did one book and class B did another). When creating this timeline we also added national, and major world events to understand some of the influences that may have altered our history, and played a role in the way people made decisions. Take for instance my location which was the Corfield’s Dance Hall, located right on the water at the bottom of Gallant Ave. Corfeild’s went through many owners, but the reason the second owners sold was because of WW2. They fell into debt and ended up closing and selling the hall. Including the major world event, WW2, I was able to see why the hall closed abruptly and begin to realize that history is not just a set of loose dates, everything leads to something else, which was key to understanding in this project.
Once the entire class had delved into the readings and done some research, we all made a list of stops on the existing walking tour we would like to make “our” stop. What I mean by “our” stop is that we would be focusing on one stop for the project which would become “our”stop. My three proposed stops were, Corfield’s Dance Hall/DCK, Covecliff Elementary School, and the Moore Family Store. I ended up with Corfield’s Dance Hall, and Deep Cove Kayak which was perfect. To start research on the past of both locations (I thought they were in the same place, which was a hard truth to learn later on down the road) I dug a bit into “Echoes Across Seymour,” in which there was a whole blurb about the past of the kayak shop, including dates and names, which was incredibly helpful. The only hitch was there was nothing about Corfield’s. I mustered on, and ended up just talking about the land by the water in the cove, making sure not to step on the yacht club’s toes. Our first proper assignment which would carry into our final project was the draft of the blurb for the pamphlet. 100 words max, and it had to include two historical perspectives, as well as all your history, of the best of it. (Mine is on stop #7 on the pamphlet) I struggled a bit with this being fluent in writing larger amounts of text, I was bit daunted to write less. My first draft sucked, I made revisions following that (ex. completely cutting out Deep Cove Kayak Shop from the pamphlet) and my second draft looked much better. Once our pamphlet blurbs were in we could then return to beefing up the words since the new blurb would go on the google map that my group (the eagles) were creating. We also assigned roles for our group to fall into to help smooth out any confusion. I became a communicator between The Eagles, and The Wolves, just making sure that everyone had handed there info in to the right place and was on time. I also was supposed to help Jesse with the route, but it was cut so that job disappeared. While the map and pamphlet were being made we also had to finish up our individual stops, things like digital enhancement and our audio recording, were necessary to completing the stop. For my digital enhancement I scored a phone interview with Erian Baxter, the co-owner of the Deep Cove Kayak Shop (DCK), her mom started up the business in 1983, and Erian continues on her legacy today. In the interview I asked her questions about the past present and future of the DCK, here is the interview if you would like to listen. After the interview one of the last hurdles was the on scene video, the camera was a bit shaky, but I was happy with the video.
Here is the whole classes video!
Once everything was handed in it was just a matter of putting all the pieces together, making sure that everything worked. Here is the final product in length and I highly recommend you try visiting the stops if your local to North Van. The tour itself would be a very cool fair weather walk of scenic Deep Cove! Also if your in the cove check out Deep Cover Heritage Society, and pic up one of our pamphlets. I believe thats the end, this project was really fun and I enjoyed the class time we got to share ideas and brainstorm together.
Competencies
The competencies being assessed in the duration of this project was “writing and designing text and using resources.” I felt I demonstrated this strongly by my many edits and recreations of my blurb, as well as making sure that I always held a good grasp of the Historical Thinking Concepts from historicalthinking.ca. I also made sure to cite my resources, and keep track of the websites and books I referenced, sadly there wasn’t much about the history of the Deep Cove Kayak Shop and Corfield’s Dance Hall, but I did find enough resources. All in all I felt this was a strong project for me, and am excited to start the next project.