This has to have been my best socials term yet, probably in quality of work but most definitely in enjoyment. This Final projects main focus point was how power affects relationships and we explored this while covering the expansion of Canada to the west and the joining of British Columbia. Our work also followed the theme of learning through videos this year and a vast majority of our work has been in video format. Anyway I am going to use this blog post to talk about the term, the main point and the work that I have done including most recently my animation on William Billy Barker who was a famous prospector in the Cariboo gold rush. 

The first main thing that we started learning about after we stopped doing WW1 would be Louise Riel and the red river Rebellion. We learned about how he led the Metis to rebel against the Canadian government through a graphic novel. We talked about things like who was in power and whether or not Louise Riel was a good guy or a bad guy. I personally argued that he was a bad guy as I thought the ends of his rebellion did not justify the means. 

Then we started learning about Canada’s expansion west which had us look into many stories from different people from around the time. The first time we started learning about the topic was actually in Calgary where we got to see the Canadian Pacific Railway which was the main reason that British Columbia joined Canada. The CPR would be a big topic for most of our research points and just like how the majority of settlements were built along the rail most of our stories would come from people who were involved in the rail in one way or another. We eventually started viewing the stories with our main question of how power affects relationships and last week we  needed to make a video on an important person who held and used power.

I chose to make my video on William “Billy” Barker and how he found gold in the Cariboo gold Rush. In my original video I didn’t really talk about how he was effected by power but I recently revised this and in my new video I talk about how he was effected by his own power. William Billy Barker moved to California after the railway industry slowly took over the waterways industry. He worked in the California gold rush for a while before he later moved up north to BC to participate in the Cariboo Gold Rush. He found a really large amount of gold at his claim and he became one of the richest people in town, well the new town that spring up after he made his find called Barkerville. William was mayor of Barkerville and held power of over the people there but didn’t do that much in regards to people in the town when it came to how he sued power over the people in Barkerville. The main effect of his power and the most noticeable one was the effect it had on Billy. He became this paranoid man who was so scared of losing his power. He was in constant fear of having his gold stolen and this resulted in him drinking and smoking a lot. While it isn’t written down as far as I checked I believe that his new mental state led to a lot of his relationships with people he new were not on as good terms as before and he could have been a bit more isolated. He eventually lost his power as he got older and his unhealthy habits caught up with him when he died in an unmarked grave with no money to his name.

video goes here

I already said here that I made a revision on my final video with a bigger emphasis on power and how it affected him. I have worked really hard on this project, from writing my book reports to creating my video. I think that this project was a really strong ending note this year.