The war to end all wars also known as World War One was the focus of this humanities project. Our driving question was “How might we use graphic novels to understand Canada’s involvement in WWI?”. To answer this question we did many activities and assignments but our final product was a graphic novel. The graphic novel we were to create had to be about a topic from World War1 and Canada’s involvement. I chose to do Women at War the ones holding down the home front. Before we could get to creating the graphic novel we had to learn about WW1 and how we were going to create the graphic novel. 

To start off this project, we looked at possible causes to WW1. We read about tensions in Europe especially with Austrian, Hungary and Serbia. We read about concepts like Nationalism, Militarism, Imperialism and alliances. Each one of things led to the growing tensions in Europe. I then had to write a paragraph about what we thought the main cause was of WW1. I had a lot of trouble choosing one because I believe there were many things that made WW1 happen. In the end, I decided that WW1 would not have happened at that time if it wasn’t for the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Later, closer to the end of the project, we thought about the consequences of WW1, both the immediate and the long term ones.  For example, an immediate consequence was the loss of life and infrastructure in many countries in Europe. A long term consequence was the weapon development like the use of tanks, machine guns, and chemical warfare. These were created around WW1 in a larger scale and have been around ever since then. These two parts of the project connect to the curricular competency: Analyze Cause and Consequence. When I look back at my understanding, on Cause and Consequences, I think I did a very detailed job on this competency. I feel that I have a thorough understanding of the complicated causes of the war and also of the consequences. 

Aside from the Nelson Text pages we read, we read The War to End All Wars 1914-1918 written by Alan Cowsill. This graphic novel informed us about many battles in the war and gave us a visual about what was happening at this time. Many parts of the novel was from the perspective of a soldier which was a very interesting choice. I had only heard of WW1 with some facts but the soldier’s perspective helped me to understand what it was actually like to be in WW1. It was interesting to see how all the relationships between the countries such as the alliances that were made, who supported who and why they supported them. Another interesting part to see was the propaganda that countries would use to get more men to join. They would guilt them, scare them and make men feel that it was an honourable thing to do to make their country proud. The graphic novel mentions the story about the famous story about the men who took a break at Christmas. I wondered, if they could take a break and be happy together, then why were they really fighting? It seems like the war really had nothing to do with the average person. 

Looking at the War to End All Wars 1914-1918 graphic novel prepared me to create my own graphic novel, which was the final product. This final product would show the curricular competency of Create Effectively which means “Effectively incorporating technical and narrative writing within a comic panel”. My chosen topic was Women at War=: those holding down the home front. For this topic I needed to research, use at least two sources, create a 5 W page, storyline and story board before I could even start the graphic novel. My topic was more challenging then I thought because I could not find exact dates and events of women here at Canada because most people were paying attention to the War and not as much as to what was happening here in Canada. Another challenge for me was creating the images for the graphic novel. Because there were not many photographs in my sources, there were not many to trace to then use for the graphic novel. I also found it very hard to actually to draw. However, when I look at my final product, I believe I was able to communicate what I wanted to say. 

Overall, when I think about this topic, I think that WW1 was a waste of life. I recognize that it is hard to understand all the different perspective, thoughts and ideas that went into the war. I might never fully understand why it happened and what the point was. It seemed like a lot of tension over land and power and at the end of the war it looked quite similar even with some land and power shift. I would hope that today we would have better ways of dealing with regional and national disagreements.