Lake Louise With Friends!

Once again, it’s time to hit the road! An early morning start awaited the students of the PLP 9 class as they loaded their gear into the trusty Seycove Bus and buckled their seatbelts, plugged in their headphones and departed on another life changing memorable journey. Before departing to Alberta, we had previously studied identity. This trip would give us many good answers to our driving questions, How Does Land Impact Identity? Last year we visited the Beautiful Oregon Coast (click the link to read more!) and this year, it was a road trip through the mountains and back in time to when the Canadian Railroad was being built!

Filming Our Ghost Town Movie!

First stop, the Ghost Town in Three Valley Gap! What? Ghosts? Yup you heard me, ghosts! But don’t worry, I’m not talking about real freaky ghosts you’d expect to see on Halloween. I’m talking more of the crazy PLP kids running around the peaceful deserted town with iPads, white sheets and horse heads kind of ghosts. I know, probably just as creepy to other tourists walking around the historic site. This ghost town, nestled next to the Chateau in Three Valley Gap was never actually a real town. There were never families and people walking about who lived there. This “town” was made up of multiple rescued buildings from the pioneer days in the 1800s and also featured many cars from different time periods. Our task here was to create a movie using the Ghost Town as our movie set. The film could be about anything! In this project, I worked with Gabby, Luciano and Amelia to bring to life a tragic yet very animated film about a group of friends. In this task, we decided to play to our strengths and base our characters off of our personalities. If you know me, you may have already guessed that I played a little happy girl with a huge cheesy smile on her face. Easy right? Haha no! There was a small catch, as this movie was being filmed in a pioneer ghost town setting, the film had to be era appropriate and therefore would have to be a black and white silent film. No talking and no sound effects. Just music. If you’d like to watch our film and see how it turned out, check out the video below!

https://youtu.be/MPxmLIhNsAI

The next morning was another early start (infact every morning was an early rise and shine!) and once packed, left for the spiral tunnels. Another stop along our journey through the construction of the railroad. Along the way we stopped at a wolf sanctuary center called Northerlights. Who knew wolves were so playful and cute! There, we interviewed wolf experts and learned about the importance of key stone species (such as the wolves). These are species of animals that, if taken away, can greatly impact others. For example, a national park once decided it was a good idea to kill all wolves in the area to protect prey animals from harm. Little did they know that with the wolves gone, the population of elk, deer, squirrels and other prey began to grow to the extreme! The park was soon filled with prey animals! Well, lesson learned, all animals are there for a reason and removing a key stone species can cause a huge impact!

That same day, our class also visited the very famous world renown Lake Louise. For those of you who don’t know, Lake Louise is a very famous lake found  in the Banff area of Alberta. It’s natural beauty such as the lake’s unique mountains draw many people from all over the world to visit. There were many photographers and people from all around the world trying to capture every memorable moment of their visit to the lake. During this time, I thought it a good opportunity to interview a few of the tourists about where they were from and what drew them to this location as I thought it would be a good aspect to my Identity Video. Everyone from our class left the lake with many pictures. Definitely a highlight of the trip.

Talking about natural beauty and tourism, another highlight of the Alberta trip was Banff. Very much like Whistler, Banff is a small resort town in the mountains  that mainly relies on tourists to keep businesses running. Souvenir shops lined the streets of this small town and people were everywhere!

Now, who could go to Alberta and not see Dinosaurs? Drumheller was a very unique and historical place. Although the land is currently flat and dry, evidence shows that millions of years ago, greenery and rivers use to be there. The museum was incredible and showcased many displays of different dinosaurs and their different habitats. We also got to do a small workshop where each of us created a different cast of a fossil. A cool fact I learned during my visit was that the Albertasaurus (yes it has he word Alberta in it because it was the most common dinosaur found in Alberta) was actually more dangerous than the all mighty T-Rex! Infact, the T-Rex species wasn’t around for long before all dinosaurs got wiped out! Along with the workshop, each of us had to create a short video about one of the artifacts in the museum. I immediately chose the large ammonite that was fossilized in a gem stone called ammolite therefore giving the fossil a gorgeous gem like texture and colour! To see my video, click below!

R2-D2 was at Beakerhead!

Another important aspect of the trip, although not the most exciting at times was Beakerhead. This is a unique Arts and Science Festival. Engineers and artists use both art and science to create or invent a machine or sculpture like object. If your still confused about what it is, Beakerhead is best described as Destination Imagination or D.I. on steroids as in it’s basically D.I. for adults. For each “Beaker” we visited, all students were required to think about the importance and science behind each of them. The exciting part of this event was actually Beakernight. This was the main celebratory night featuring many live shows and demonstrations! It was very exciting to watch all the inventors demo their inventions or their knowledge through experiments. As the night came to a close and our toes began to freeze, we decided it was time to head back to the hotel.

Our final stop that although kinda creepy and weird in ways, was the Enchanted Forest. I know, sounds like a very happy fairy tale child fantasy location, but in reality, the place was rather creepy. Basically, the story behind the Enchanted Forest was that a lady loved to hand create these pretty scary looking concrete statues of fairy tale creatures such as the three little pigs, little miss Muffet, the cow that jumped over the moon, Snow White and more! Because these creatures were made by hand without the use of any moulds, well, I guess it’s safe to say that that’s what made the place creepy. Many of the statues had deformed faces or missing limbs or terribly chipped paint. Here, we had to create another group video. Like the Ghost Town project, this video would have to tell a story. I worked with Fraser, Jackson and Amelia to bring to life a crazy yet creative story we call The Rodeo Steed and Pink Piggy. Our take on the classic Romeo and Juliet Fairy Tale. To watch our movie, click the video below!

Wow! What a trip! There were so many amazing memories, highlights and moments, it was so hard to choose just a few to mention in this post! For that reason, I’ve created a video briefly showing the highlights of each day during our trip. I hope you enjoyed this post ans stay tuned for more awesome learning, discoveries, projects and more inside looks at my life, Flow Through School. My Journey Through the Process! Until next time!