Over the course of six years over 44 000 Canadians lost their lives, over 54 000 were injured. From 1939 to 1945 more than 1.1 million Canadians served in the Army, Navy, Air Force and other various sources across the common wealth. World War II was a long six years full of death.
For this blog post we had to research one of the many Canadian soldiers who lost their lives during the war. Using Canadian archives we had to search for an interesting soldier with many primary documents and discover their story. After hours of searching through many interesting soldiers and learning many stories, I finally decided to do my assignment on William Swift. He had 216 pages of documents. They covered everything, from when he first enlisted to how he died. There was a letter from one of his friends sent to Swift’s mother, and a list rythong that was on him when he died. I looked through all 216 pages, getting a glimpse into his life and thinking about what being over seas must have been like for him.
William Swift was born on May 3rd, 1905 in Vernon BC. Later in his life he moved to Nelson BC, despite the fact that his 4 sisters and 5 brothers were still living in Vernon. He was unemployed when he decided to enlist for the war. This is just a tiny bit of information I found looking through the documents. Below are a few examples of what I used.
Once looking through all of the documents and doing a bit more research into WorldWar II and what life must have been like for William Swift, I wrote a diary entry as if I were him. This forced me to put myself in his position and try to imagine what he was going through. Of course, I can never fully know the extent of what being overseas was like for him. This is just a guess of what may have been going through his head at the time.
Isn’t the Great Depression an oxymoron? How can something so bleak be considered “Great”? But I guess that’s due to the misuse of the word. Anyways…
The thirties were a time of despair, with Canada’s economy plummeting and the stock market crashing. The whole country was in a depression: The Great Depression. Black Tuesday marked the beginning of this horrible decade. On Tuesday, October 29th, 1929, the New York Stock exchange dropped 12%. It didn’t go back to normal for another ten years.
Of course two years after this sudden economic crash, the prairies went into a terrible drought. What great timing…but the fact that two years into the depression a natural disaster worsen the county’s condition further made me wonder: How much worse did the drought make the depression?
The 1920s were fairly prosperous for Canadian farmers, with successful wheat farming and favourable weather. But in the late 20s the price of wheat plummeted with the economy, as wheat was overproduced globally. Of course, even if the wheat industry hadn’t taken a hit then, with the upcoming drought it wouldn’t have gotten a chance to prosper further. In 1931 the Great Plains went into a drought that wouldn’t end for nearly a decade. While it was more like a series of droughts, there wasn’t enough time for the farms to recover between the multiple waves of dryness.
The damage began with the soil drying out and all the crops dying but it didn’t end there. This drought, that some scientists believe is the worst drought North America has experienced in 300 years, not only killed crops, but also the plants which kept the top soil in place. This allowed the top soil to loosen, which meant that wind could caused severe dust storms. These storms blew dust everywhere, covering houses and suffocating livestock. They dumped mounds of soil over everything, and even gave children pneumonia. During dust storms visibility was limited to approximately one meter, although it’s not like anyone would have being going out during them. These storms created big black clouds of dust that forced people inside and stirred everything up.
In 1933 alone there were 139 days of storms. The Dust Bowl only added to the disparity of the depression, putting the prairies in even more of a crisis than the rest of the country already was. By the end of the drought many people had left the prairies to escape the dust and their unsuccessful farms. Those who did stay struggled to make a living, in fact, 2/3 of the farmers were forced to line up for monthly aid.
The drought didn’t only affect the prairies though, but also Canada as a whole. Canada is heavily reliant on trading, one of their main exports being wheat. Of course, the wheat industry failing caused Canada’s economic conditions to worsen. Saskatchewan’s provincial income fell by 90%,The drought meant that not only could Canadians not afford food, but they also couldn’t produce it.
This is a newspaper article I created to answer my question help you to further understand the impact the drought had on Canada.
While the depression itself had a terrible impact on Canada’s economy, the Dust Bowl greatly contributed to the tough times the country went through. Let’s just hope that a drought of that magnitude doesn’t hit the prairies again, and if it does I sure hope we aren’t already in a depression.
Happy new year! 2016 was an interesting year, so of course the last project of the year had to be just as interesting! The project was filled with learning (of course), stress (as always) and a lot of last minute planning (well duh…) but the final product was worth all of the hard work we put in to it.
This year for the exhibition my class was tasked with the challenge of creating an immersive experience of Canada’s emerging identity from pre WWI to the depression. My group got assigned post war, 1920s. It was a time of excitement, women finally got the chance to vote, there were new innovations, lots of partying and in general people wanted to enjoy life after the rough times of war. My group was made up of me and four of my classmates: Luciano Boniface, Maria Melhado, Michael Sutherland and Kirby Harris. This was a pretty strong group, as we’re all hard workers, but there was only one non newbie in the group, so most of us were quite inexperienced with exhibitions. We didn’t let that get in our way though, we were all up for the challenge!
Our project began with doing a lot of research. We learned about the time period, the key players and a general timeline of important events. We found out what the 20s were famous for and what people in general don’t know about the time. Then we had to come up with our setting. We first thought of 3 potential settings and then came up with a list of pros and cons for each and developed our ideas from there.
After quite a bit of planning and brainstorming we decided we’d do a voting booth, where people could learn a bit about women’s new rights, and a strike. Then it was time to figure out our characters. We decided that I should be a rich woman who was voting, Maria should be a First Nations soldier, Kirby lead a strike, Michael was a strike breaker and Luciano was a homeless beggar. From there we developed our scripts, here’s a part of the script:
Then it was time to make our props. Here’s a list of what we needed for our setting:
Protest signs
Tables for the polling station
A ballot box
Polling booths
Backgrounds
Display boards and clothing racks (for walls)
On the day of the exhibition right at three we started setting up. Once we set up our group felt awkward because we had so much empty space. So 10 minutes to go we took the art display boards from the hall way and the clothing racks from the lost and found (which we covered with paper) to create walls and make it look like we had less empty space.
When we began to present it took a couple tries to get into it, but once we got started it went fairly smoothly. All in all, I’m very proud of what my group managed to accomplish. If I were to do this again I would definitely do a few things differently. I would figure out how to use the space better because ours looked kind of empty. Along with that, I’d try to get a more interesting character because my part in the exhibition felt really dull compared to my groups’ characters.
In general though, I think we did a great job, especially considering our limited time, he fact that we weren’t able to set it up until 2 hours before hand, and not getting to rehearse with actual people going through.
This project taught me both a lot about the 1920s and how to create an immersive experience. We had to make a performance and a set that people could walk through and experience. This project added a new technique to my long list of interesting ways to present information!’
