For the last month and a bit we have been doing a unit all about Canada. We started by looking at the explorers coming across the Atlantic and worked our way up to the two Canada’s, upper and lower. We then talked about the confederation of Canada and its events after.

For this post we had to look at all that we have researched and come up with what we felt was the most important part of Canadian history. I was in a group with Ryan and we decided the best part was the creation of New France.

Without New France Canada wouldn’t have as much french influence as it does. With the french people arriving first it lead to a war and some conflict between the British and the French but it all worked out in the end. (Mostly) Without New France their wouldn’t be a second language for Canada and our culture would be completely different, especially in the east. Most Canadians know some basic french phrases and it is a required course for a couple years of school. Without French culture we might not have Poutine or the word Toque. Some city names would be completely different. For example Montreal could have been New Bristol or something. New France pretty much set the base off Canada it created our roots and it definetly contributed to confederation. Without New France Canada would be a whole different story.

Now since we are in PLP we also had to create a piece of media to emphasize our point. We decided to make a documentary, almost like Mysteries at The Museum. I wrote the script and did all of the talking and Ryan put it all together.

Now with the project we also did some smaller things.

The First being an Explain Everything of one of the key people of New France. I did mine on Count Frontenac.

Then we also had to do an advertisement trying to get settlers to come to New France and farm the land. It definetly wasn’t our best work. The colours didn’t quite work out and they were very bright.

Then we put together another draft.

After a while we did another assignment. This time about the CPR or Canadian pacific railway. We had to create an advertisement trying to get our target audience to work for the CPR. I chose the Chinese immagrints for mine so that’s way the main heading is in Chinese. For a translation it says “Come work for the Canadian Pacific Railway.” I also tried to stick to the colours used back then in photos and in paper colour.

Finally we talked talked about the BC gold rush. For this we had to do a character card about someone, real or fictional, that was involved in the gold rush in some way. My person was a Chinese immigrant that worked as a bartender but then tried to do some mining, unsuccessfully.

Gold Rush character card template-2jszs23

I really enjoyed this unit. Having travelled to Ottawa a fair bit and going to some historical sites on the east coast, it was quite cool to really learn about the historical significance of those places. I also really liked how much history Canada has even though it is only 150 years old. I can appreciate now how much conflict went on and is still going on (on a smaller scale) today. This was probably my most favourite unit of the year.