Introduction of Project + Minorities in Canada 

We began with the idea of what minorities are in general; then we evolved to brainstorming, what kinds of minorities we know of in Canada. This was the definition that we came up with: a relatively small group of people commonly with a small amount of power or representation. After we had a definition for this word, minority, we brainstormed the main minority groups within Canada. 

I found it quite interesting to acknowledge the minorities, and noticing that I, and other people in the class are apart of these minority groups.

The Jade Peony

After only touching the very surface of the meaning of a minority, we dove deeper into the lives of people living in one. As a class we read Wayson Choy’s, The Jade Peony. We followed the lives of a Chinese family in Vancouver in the 1940’s. We had the opportunity to experience the lives of the three siblings of the family, dealing with different paths in life. 

After reading the book, I was able to understand how traditional Chinese culture contrasts to Canadian culture. I understood how much environment affects children when they are young, and I was able to put myself in the shoes of the characters as I read the story.

Positionally Paper

In our humanites class, one of the main focuses have been essays. Including, learning to analyze literature, use correct punctuation, and how to format correctly. What we had already read, and learnt so far, practically set us up to write this essay. We had already been comparing ourselves to the information we had learnt in class and in The Jade Peony. Our driving question for the essay was, “How does your position impact your experiences of literature?” The idea was to answer this question through your essay, with examples from The Jade Peony, Wayson Choy, and yourself. 

My ideas throughout the essay were categorized into three topics, location, generation, and beliefs and values. When the driving question was first presented to our class, these were the ways that I answered the question in the first place. 

My Groups Project 

Next up in the process was our podcast project, The Peoples Podcast. We had the chance to focus on one minority group of our interest, and dive deep into their story in order to create awareness for Canadians. I was in a group with Adlih, and Daniel, we focused on Sikhism. I wanted to learn more about the religion because I didn’t know very much and I knew there was a lot to learn. 

Interviews 

My group and I, had the amazing opportunity to take part in two different interviews with people directly connected to the Sikh community, and faith. 

Our first interview was with Mya Bhangoo, a social studies teacher at Seycove Secondary. Ms. Bhangoo was born into the Sikh religion, and explained that she is in the midst of transitioning into Judaism. She tells us her story throughout this interview, how the values of Sikhism are restraining, and what it felt like to grow up raised in a Sikh family. 

For our second interview of the project, we had the opportunity to visit a local Sikh Temple. With the help of Mrs. Parmar, we were able to eat lunch at the temple, be shown around, and have an interview with Dr. Puran Singh Gill.  

Writing + Recording

With the stories and information that we collected from our interviews, we wrote a script for recording our parts of the podcast. Our speaking, is meant to guide the stories of Mya Bhangoo, and Dr. Puran Singh Gill. 

For our first draft we all wrote separate parts of the script and only recorded our parts of the script, this made our first draft sound very separated, and wasn’t engaging to listen to. So we learnt for our 2nd draft, to record together. Having different voices made the podcast more interesting to listen to. 

Editing 

Finally, it came to editing, Adlih worked on draft one, and Daniel worked on draft two. It was all of us that worked together to figure out what it was that we needed to fix. We also had the help of our classmates to give revision suggestions. 

Most of our revisions were audio quality, and fades between audio clips. Which were a bit of an ordeal to fix, but made a huge difference for our final draft. 

This is our final draft of the Podcast.

Reflection 

I’m gonna do a rose and thorn reflection for this project, something I learnt and something I did well. The thorn in this project was the step I took forward in learning how to be in a group project. To work as a team. I’ve always had trouble working in a group with a digital projects like this one, I’ve learnt how to have separate tasks within a project, and then bring our work together to collaborate. This is something that will be useful for future projects and my career. When you can comfortably work in a group, you are truly using the strengths of everyone in the group. For the rose in the project, I believe that the interviews we got were some of the best I’ve ever been apart of. They both went really smoothly, and we got a lot of information from our interviewees. We were prepared for each of them, and got both an experience and stories for our podcast. 

I hope that our interviewees enjoy the way that we told their stories, and that we showed the Sikh community in an authentic way. I’m really glad I had the opportunity to study a minority group so closely. There was a lot to learn, and I feel as though I am more aware of the Canadian population as a whole.