Hey, welcome back to another Blog Post. In this Humanities project, we were learning about the BC gold rush. We were to choose a group of immigrants I chose Chinese peoples. We will be answering the driving question of: How did the discovery of gold shape our province and its people? Out final product was to be a story centred around one person fictional or real from a specific group of people who migrated to BC. So I wrote my story about Zaho Zai Gong a Chinese store owner who lives in Barkerville during the Cariboo gold rush

To start this project we got some background information on the goldrushes of BC. You can look at my notes below. I found the Cariboo gold rush more interesting and as a result decided to set my story in that time period

Next we moved on to learn about cause and consequence and made a cause and consequence chart about the Chilcotin War. Which was series of minor conflicts fought by the indigenous peoples and the Miners of the Cariboo gold rush. Learn more here ➡️ Chilcotin War 
You can also read my cause and consequences sheet below.

Keystone 1

For Keystone 1 we were to write a paragraph and fill out a cause and consequence chart. You can see my chart below

To start I wasn’t sure what to put on my chart but I thought about which events seemed the most historically significant to me. And as you can see above I think I picked some good ones. Moving onto the paragraph we had to write the paragraph about our cause and consequence sheet. So for me I had a lot about Migrations and how the influx of foreigners impacted the people already there and the people that would come after them.

Keystone 2

For this keystone we made a character card about our person. As mentioned my character was Zaho Zai Gong. He moved from China to California and then to BC you can view his character card below.

I really struggled with this keystone as I had to revise several times. So start my notes on my group of peoples was not very good you can see that below

But after I revised my notes were better

but I still needed to add more detail to my character card. The problem I discovered was I needed zero in on Zaho’s Background and back story after I did that my character card was very good.

Keystone 3

For the 3rd and final keystone we made a 3 act story about our character. We also had a story checklist to do. First an explanation of the 3 act story structure. 3 act story structure starts with act one in which we meet our characters and understand their goals. In act 2 the main character is supposed to encounter an obstacle usually set by the antagonist then is a big twist and then a disaster. Which leads right into the main climax of the story. In Act 3 the story winds down and ends. So knowing all this here is my story chart.

 

Now the moment you have all been waiting for. My final story and the answer to the driving question. First the driving question which is case you forgot was: How did the discovery of gold shape our province and its people? The answer to this question is: BC would not exist without the gold rush it is likely that Britain would have sold BC to the USA of the USA would have annexed BC. The gold rush changed all of that putting BC on the map and getting Britain so make us a official colony now that we were making money. It also allowed us to join confederation later on. How it effected its people however is a different question. The main people who were effected by the gold rush were indigenous peoples as they lost about 2/3 of there population to disease. It also effected anyone living in BC as when they joined the confederation they had to become Canadian citizens. In conclusion there were both positive and negative effects of the BC gold rush. You could say that it helped BC grow into the thriving province it is today. But you could also say that this gold rush would lead to the mistreatment of ethnic minorities for years to come. Now for the final product my story

Or click this link: Zaho Zai Gong

Thanks for reading!! Carter=Blog