Technically speaking, I am not a Canadian. I was born and raised outside of Canada until the age of nine. I have lived in other countries for more time than I have lived in Canada. Surprisingly, in the last two years, I have learned more Canadian history than I have in my entire life. At my last school I started learning a bit of US history, and found that it was hard to relate to and difficult to remember the facts. When we started this unit on Confederation, I finally started to understand why history is important. Our driving question in this unit was 
how do the story’s of our history shape our identities today. A good example of this driving question was when we fist started learning about Confederation, and how it opened up a key hole in to the past. I found that it helped me understand what canada is and how it came to be. Anouther good example of our driving question is Lionel Messi, one of the best soccer players our there. In his early years he was troubled learner and once he through a chair at his teacher because he could not understand a question. If you could know his history you would admire him more, and realize how many obstacles he would have had to push through to become the person he is today. I was able to connect what I had learned from my past and relate it to the beginning of Canada as a country. I had always lived by the rule that you should try to live in the present moment, and since history is in the past, I thought it wasn’t important. Now I realize that learning from the past is necessary in order to improve the future, while still staying in the present.
Before the unity of the British North American colonies, the relationship between the French and English was very tumultuous. Their relationship was unsteady even before the Hundred Years’ War. Leading up to the invasion of British North America, the British and French had many quarrels and wars over land. 
Therefore, it wasn’t a surprise to anyone that upper and lower Canada would not be stable. The British had control over upper Canada while the French had control over lower Canada, which is now referred to as Quebec. Then came the rebellions of 1837 – 1838, and the rebellious fellows Louis Joseph Papineau, and William Lyon Mackenzie who both had discovered problems with the government in Upper and Lower Canada. When the British government figured out that there was rebelions in British North America, they knew that they needed to do something before it was two late. They realized that there was a need for reform, but they needed someone to go and research British North America and find out what the problem was in person. Lord Durham was sent from England to investigate the causes and make suggestions to improve governance in the colonies. 
In class we were able to travel to the colonies of Upper and Lower Canada in the eyes of lord Durham, to talk to business owners, soldiers, and key players, to determine not only the causes of the rebellions, but also the solutions. We were able to do this by using the app Puffin, an interactive website on our iPad. Some of the ways that the British government helped reform Canada were to join the two colonies to decrease the cultural divide. They also changed the form of government so that the people had more of a deciding voice. Finally, they influenced the dispute over land by sharing the resources of farming and growing the economy again. They ended up implementing a new form of government called responsible government, a government that was responsible to the people.
After the rebellions and the union of Upper and Lower Canada, there began to be many pressures placed on this new colony of Canada. The government that was created to keep control over the two sections of Canada, was very slow, and ineffective.
Even though there were representatives from both the English and French sides of Canada, there was no representation of the First Nations people. Because of this, the only communication to and from the aboriginal people were through trade. Soon it was obvious that the the government needed to unify Canada. John A. Macdonald, one of the founding fathers and architect of the Canadian constitution, put forth the idea of unification. With the help of George Etienne-Cartier, a politician leader of the French, and George Brown, owner and creator of the Globe and Mail, MacDonald pitched the idea to the Governor General, and through him, the queen. He later became the first Prime Minister of a unified Canada. 
In class, one of our final projects was to create our own BNA (British North America). We were divided into six groups. Each group presented a list of political demands. These included the amount of seats each colony would have in government, their opinion on the Canadian Pacific Railway, and the location of the capital of this unified Canada. 
In real life, only four colonies joined in 1867 when the constitution was put forward. Unlike in our simulation, five out of the six groups agreed to join. In my opinion, we succeeded in creating a stronger BNA act that was more unanimous.
During our history lessons, we worked on a project called the Heritage Minute Project. Coming from the US, I had never seen a Heritage Minute before, but if you were born and raised in Canada, you have probably seen many. 
When I watched my first Heritage Minute, I didn’t know what to expect, although the name is pretty self explanatory. Basically, it’s a minute of video that tells a story of people, places, or events that are important to Canadian history. Over the weeks during this unit, we watched many Heritage Minutes. Each Heritage Minute was successfully able to cover a person’s biggest accomplishments or a life changing event in just one minute.
My Favourite Heritage Minute
I learned an enormous amount of Canadian history and was able to fill the blanks in my limited knowledge of how Canada came to be. The main characteristic of this project was creating our own Heritage Minute. In the creation process, we had to follow a timeline of assignments. These included a story, a script, fact checking, filming and editing. We each picked a topic that occurred between 1700 and the early 1900s. Our topic was the Oregon Boundary Dispute or the Oregon Question as some may call it. We created the story on an ever-growing shared Google document.
After intense critique and revision we were able to advance to the next step of script writing on an App called Celtx, After researching script writing techniques, and finishing the script, we then moved onto the final step of filming. This step was the hardest since four people in our group had very busy schedules. We ended up shooting the scenes in and out of school, and in the end, even casted my father to deliver the final lines. I can now explain to my American parents how Canada came to be.
Draft One
Draft Two
In the begging of this unit, I thought learning about history was going to be a struggle. I knew that I was going to have to memorize a lot of facts and events that I would probably never use again. Although, with time I realized the importance of learning history, not only to be well informed, but also to have the tools to change the future. I know that if we don’t learn from the past, we will repeat the same mistakes in the future.