Another year, another exhibition. As per usual the lower grades had their blue sky projects out and were scurrying around preparing like frantic mice. The only preparation we were doing was worrying. 
 A few weeks prior we had been told our final project was to be a debate and at this news I could rest fairly easily as I am a very confident public speaker and debater. Our first task was doing an impromptu persuasive speech about a random topic. I volunteered first for our group and got the topic “Disney movies should be banned.” After giving the speech the rest of the groups went and I tied for first with Jackson which is not much of a surprise. After a few more weeks of doing stuff like this I hadn’t lost any of my confidence but knew that I would be faced with a challenge with every one of the groups. My group was Jayden and Gabi.

Our first showdown was against Kirby, Stanfield and Mike. Once we got up to the podium it ended up being mostly just me and Kirby debating. We got the audience vote and one of the judges which was enough secure the win. I got a ton of compliments which felt great but the whole experience was tainted by certain things. 
 First I will say what I thought went well though. I liked the way during the debates you would have to win over both the judges and the audience rather than focusing on a single way to pamper. I also really liked the topics that were used as they fair for the most part and could see myself arguing each point effectively. 
 Now the things I don’t like about the night. First was the fact that a lot of people were beyond stressed and worried to the point were I would say that I took some of the fun out of it. I feel that knowing the person opposite you may be stressing out and super nervous despite the fact nobody showed it was a little sad. Of course there is also the fact that one of the judges messed up a lot but I won’t talk about that it’s not entirely relevant. Also the teams were not really fair when it came to confidence in public speaking. I did think the overall structure of the debate was good though and I would 100% do it all over again.
 Next time I would let everyone choose their own teams and if they were unfair then move the players around. Apart from that I would suggest doing it over multiple classes instead of in public if that is possible. 
 As for preparing I didn’t do much except studying lord of the flies and becoming extremely familiar with the concepts. This is because I knew that for me it’s better to have key concepts rather than be bogged down in individual ideas that I feel compelled to use because I wrote them down a few days before. I prefer to use my knowledge and skill at debating to win.

When you search the definition of the word innocence you come across the expected definitions that one is not guilty or not responsible. But the third definition is the most interesting: “free from moral wrong; not corrupted.” We often see this quality in young children or naive adults but it is evident that it becomes less and less apparent the older you are. This is not because age takes it but because the things that come with age, experiences do. Elijah in three day road loses his to the war. Before he left his innocence was still in tact while Xavier’s was waning. The war showed him horrible things and horrible people but it was him becoming one of these horrors for the Germans in a land where fear already festered in the hearts of every man that truly took it away. However, does this make Elijah evil? When you search up the definition of evil you see “profoundly immoral and malevolent.” Elijah is not evil, it is clear he has a moral code but that does not stop the lose of innocence. So were does true innocence come from? It comes from ignorance and not knowing about the world around you. To go through life entirely innocent, one must also go through life turning a blind eye to the world and choosing not to see the horrors beyond what they wish was the real world.
 Of course three day road is not the only place we see this, lord of the flies’ plot revolves around the lose of innocence it is a central theme throughout. Our first look at it in that is when jack kills the first pig after hesitating the first time and letting it escape. Then one by one the innocence of the rest of the boys goes one way or another. All of them even take part in killing Simon one of their own. By the end they are completely stripped of their innocence. “Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.” This quote is extremely powerful and proves the loss of innocence and the theme of the book.

 The greatest example in Macbeth is lady Macbeth’s line: “Look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under’t.” This is a famous example in the Scottish play that is referenced quite a bit as it is telling him to hide his evil intentions by showing an innocent side. This comes at the beginning of his lose of innocence after he starts coming into contact with the witches and has started having ambitions of power.

 In history innocence was lost at a much younger age as the world crept passed the flimsier walls of old and the call to arms was passed onto much younger people. In medieval times kids started training to be knights at 7 and in Sparta weak babies were left to die and the kids themselves beaten until killing machines. There was no innocence for anyone in Sparta. 

Visual to come 

On March 2nd we were lucky enough to be visited by a World War II veteran for our morning class. It was an amazing experience to hear him talk about his experience during the war but I was surprised about how intriguing all the stuff before and mostly after the war was. He spent most of his time talking about what happened after he left the front lines which to me was the most interesting part. The class wasn’t long enough to allow him to tell us the full story but what he did say was fascinating. He really had a unique story and it was an honour to have him.

You may think that the 1930s were terrible and had nothing good come from them well that’s just correct I mean it was called the Great Depression for a reason. However we do find that in this time of hardship good things did come from this. I would say I am a pretty positive guy I have been called as much by friends and people close to me so I thought I would find these things I failed miserably. After a solid 2-3 hours of research I found nothing good came of the Great Depression NOTHING. Which I am actually quite surprised by. Fully disappointed and disheartened I set out to look at the causes of all this. A good place to start (and mandatory part of the assignment) was with an inquiry question. For mine I chose to ask “was there a single factor that started and continued the the Great Depression in Canada?” This is not a simple question and not one you can find an answer to on google. I really wanted to know how we entered one of the worst chapters in human history.
First of all a little background on the Great Depression in Canada. We relied heavily on America and other countries for our economy because of our exporting of goods like corn and lumber. This means as soon as global trade stopped because of Europe’s war debt not being supported by America the Canadian economy plummeted with them. From this we learned it was a mistake to rely so heavily on foreign trade although we are still a massive exporting country. But still isn’t the main cause and not an answer someone on the street would give you if you asked what caused the Great Depression.
Now don’t get me wrong I don’t have a definitive answer as to what caused the Great Depression because like World War One there is no one answer and people also like World War One people still debate the cause of it. I do have my opinion though. However there is one big factor a lot of people will point to as the main cause an assassination of arch duke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo if you will. I am of course talking about Black Tuesday, October 29th 1929 the day of the stock market crash. 

This market crash was caused by a lot of things. (I could write a whole blog post about it.) But it is important to realize the mistakes to know the solution. First there is the problem of buying on margin which we talked about in class and is basically buying stocks with burrowed money. Now because the stock market was fairly new people started doing this a lot and it shot up in popularity. This was fine… for a bit. Soon investors started losing faith in the businesses they were invested in and everyone tried to get their money back as quickly as possible resulting in banks failing and stock prices dropping like a lot. This is what is called a crash. Now you may say “well we learnt from that mistake and never did that again.” But if everyone borrowing money to invest in stocks and real estate instead of their own commercial businesses and stuff sounds familiar that’s because it’s what happened in 2008 with the housing market crash. 
Now here is a picture of a happy puppy after all that economics.

“But Matthew that can’t be it!” I hear you say and you would be right. A massive stock market crash while incredibly bad for the economy wouldn’t create a problem this large and on this big a global scale. However in my opinion it was the things that led up to the stock market crash that had the biggest impact. The reasons behind it alone were bad enough to make some people bankrupt all it needed was the crash to make it all happen on a larger scale. Sure the other factors like World trade, droughts and the inexperienced president Hoover caused it to burn bigger and hotter but those factors alone couldn’t cause this. It was the borrowing of money for stocks and real estate investments instead of commercial businesses and the sudden wave of people trying to take out money the banks didn’t have that had the greatest effect.

We all have our fair share of flight and PLP stories but none are so interesting as that of the production of Macbeth in World War 2. This blog post will not be in the normal style for 2 reasons: I will be doing a full big one at the end of production and secondly it is better to tell the story so far in this manner. 

When I first heard about this project as it was announced in the cold of winter I thought it would be enjoyable something for the whole class to sink their teeth into and to let everyone’s individual characters and strengths shine through. The sad reality is that we acted like the fictional people in the play we were adapting rather than ourselves. We back stabbed lied and procrastinated our way into this mess. I started the project as one of 2 people to get to work right away and while me and Luciano should have been working together we were forced to compete over the votes of our peers. Luciano ended up winning. Next the script writers were let lose on the story so with nothing else to do me and Luciano joined them.

The original script writing crew.

 Funnily enough most of script hadn’t even touched the script until we started shooting with me Luciano and Alanah being the primary writers in the beginning which is understandable Gabi and Cashel couldn’t really add much. It was at this point I was fired by the producer for being unable to connect with the rest of the team as I was sick despite the amount of technology we have but whatever. Then I arrived back at school to be reassigned to the prop department under the lead of Teva. It was on this day I realized the first of 3 major problems that lead to the state of the project as it is today.

Problem the first: The producers. Now while I have no problem with Stanfield and Jackson as people I think that their position has been flawed from the beginning. It boils down to the fact that 20% of the class was in management and refused to do anything except tell people what to do. It ended up where nobody listened to Marley the director and just argued with Jackson and Stan instead of getting stuff done while if Marley was the only one in charge it would have been done a lot quicker. Now this isn’t really Jackson and Stanfields fault as they weren’t 100% clear about their position as most of us were they could have toned it down a little and stuck to suggestions rather than saying their word is law.

After this props spent the next month almost putting up tents. 

I say props I mean Nolan and I with Teva there a lot of the time helping (he spent the rest of the time doing a great job managing). Whoever else was in props which I don’t know who they are either slacked off or didn’t do their job, this sounds harsh but it is true and I will include a quick disclaimer saying a lot the people in props had 1 or 2 other jobs that were a lot more important so I understand why they weren’t giving 100% to it. None of us complained much past jokes despite being judged for every knot and improvised peg by some people. Now I will say that both Micheal S and spencer did help us on a couple of occasions while they weren’t doing their real job which was a massive help but not as much as Nolan, Teva and I which is due to them having other stuff to do. After putting up I would say fifteen tents and me personally being involved in about ten of them and seeing people stand under them for hours filming a thirty second scene I realized the second problem. 

First tent we put up.
Problem the second: To much change/input. Now the producers getting involved in decisions I get (still shouldn’t) but actors and Costume department people (just examples) making massive script changes without even consulting anyone isn’t an amazing idea when your on a timeline. But to be fair people, like the 2 Michaels, had really good ideas and they should be considered but I don’t think they should be automatically added. It got to the point where script had redone large chunks of the script at least 7 times to the point where it was almost unrecognizable. 

This is a scene being reshot.

Now we are almost at the present. And we are in full filming mode which means more tents more hours and a lot more cold and wet students. The result of this is the third problem.

Problem the third: Procrastination. If I had a dollar for every time I heard the words we’ll film it later or let’s get it done another time I wouldn’t be a millionaire but I would be able to buy myself a new shirt or something else like that. Now people complaining isn’t anything new (I do it myself sometimes) but when enough people decide to procrastinate it becomes an issue. Filming has been postponed, scenes cut and added and whole parts needing to be filmed again. It got to the point where we were just running out of time. Our enemie had gone from ourselves to the clock.

Now the project is finally done with a finished movie completed by Zak. The movie was finished by using clever movie tricks such as narration and title cards. Would I say this was a bad experience? No. while we spent a lot of the early stages fighting in the last month we have been working together a lot better and we learned a lot more about movie making.

Hello Welcome to my SLC… psych this isn’t a script. 

In case you were wondering here are some links:

Things I am proud of:

Mini exhibition was a time and a half I tell you. The reason I am proud of it is because it took us a week to make it but the end product looked like we had a lot more prepartion and it really showed how us working as a team even when we aren’t necessarily used to working with each othe. I am also proud of how I pulled together all my skills including writing and speaking for the final presentation. 

Things I learned:

WWI cause blog post is not something that came to mind when we started talking about stuff to put in an SLC blog post but nevertheless I will harken back to a time of yonder where I enjoyed the word weekend and psychology was an easy A but I digress… I feel this blog post was a great article of learning because of not only how many drafts it went through but also the difference between it and other posts of the era. I know it sounds cheesy but me and Nolan put our heart and soul into this just listen to my German accent!
Things that demonstrate growth mindset:

Macbeth oh Macbeth what “fun” that has been the reason I say this shows a growth mindset other than me spending 30+ hours on it and I still haven’t snapped on anyone despite being fired, moved departments twice and laughed at. No this shows growth mindset for one reason: tents lots of tents. I can’t actually remember how many tents I’ve put up since this production began it must be nearing at least 10. The reason this shows a growth mindset is because usually I would complain and get mad but now I just did it. Maybe it has something to do with my job.

What was Canada’s greatest contribution to the Italian campaign?

One of the best parts of using a large amount of Canadians for the ground force in the Italian campaign is they were already used to a variety of different climates because of Canada’s vast amount of land and biomes. This came in especially handy in the Italian mountains. Valguarena, July 18th as they fought in the town and amongst the ridges they only sustained 40 deaths and 105 wounded. But the Germans lost 240 killed or wounded to what they called the “mountain boys” one of Canada’s greatest contribution to the Italian campaign. 

This was also in part to the Germans gaining respect for their enemies the Canadians. However there was an arguably more important reason for it proving the first USA and Canadian special forces unit. This division was called the 1st special service force commanded by Robert T Fredrick. 

I read a short story about him beating up a policeman and I’m not sure if it’s true but it was awesome. It said that because he was young a policeman at a bar thought he couldn’t possibly be a major general and threw Robert’s ID card on the ground. He trained his men so they were ready for all sorts of conditions like Norwegian snow and even training for Romania to take out German oil fields. This training combined with the Canadians residence to the cold made them highly effective at taking the Mediterranean peninsula. 

More proof of the mountain boys came later on as the next 17 days wore on. Leonforte the allies were kept busy with typical house to house fighting while the Hastings and prince Edward regiment did almost the impossible. With little more than rifles and Bren guns and a forty minute climb they arrived at the top of 904 meter mountain to the village of Assoro surprising the Germans. All this in partial moonlight. This resulted in heavy German casualties.

This is the story of Fredrick William Bradley a man who didn’t kill a hundred Germans, a man who didn’t blow up fifty tanks but an acting corporal who was proud of his work and just had a simple goal of becoming a plane mechanic instead of just a car and bike one. He was also a driver and son to Irish parents who after he died didn’t receive the money they deserved for a while. We know he wanted to be a plane mechanic as on his body was a book titled “1000 Questions and answers for Aero Engine mechanics” sadly he never got to achieve this goal. 

The symbol of his regiment.

Here I wrote a little more about him in the style of a journal.

Soon after this on August 11th he died but I couldn’t find out how. There was a battle on the 10th that the Germans won so it is likely that he died of injuries a day later because his reconnaissance regiment was being used as infantry at this time. But it is also possible he was on a scouting trip and got picked off.

Although this battle was a failure and the Allied Air Force ended up bombing their own men there was still propaganda praising the air cover. 

This a look at the battle that he probably died from injuries at. A map of what happened.

He is buried somewhere in this circle.

Have you ever seen those videos, history bombs? They recap major world events in song style but it’s all in one take and they move around taking the viewer on a journey where you see the perspective of everyone involved. This is the first thing I thought of when told about the exhibition and the new style we were using. The time period we would be telling the story was from pre war Laurier era Canada to the great depression in the 1930s. This gap was separated into 5 different topics: Laurier era, 1916 trench, 1917 conscription crisis, the 1920s and the Great Depression of the 1930s all with the common theme of “Canadian identity”. The location was the gym the time period 2 weeks. I was given the conscription crisis along with Cashel, Zak, Chris and Anatolia. 

 
We started where all great projects start research. After we got all the information we could we made a list of things we needed to include in our presentation like the British and French Canadian’s perspectives, the prime minister Joseph Borden and the effect it had on women. We started by putting Anatolia as a woman voter (because she’s a woman) me as a the British general (because I’m British) and Chris as Joseph Borden (because he has a deep voice). This left Zak and Cashel with no role and originally we were going to have Zak on a video at the beginning but that idea was scrapped. We soon decided on having both of the represent the Quebec people and their discontent for the war and conscription. I took us a while to figure out how to do this but eventually they came with the brilliant idea of having them infiltrate the crowd at the beginning and refuting what I as the British general had to say and after that protesting Chris’s speech as Borden. 

 At this point we had roles for everyone and a general idea of how things were going to play out and by the end of the week we had a full plan. The idea was to have Cashel and Zak to greet them at the beginning of our section and address the group as their fellow Quebec people to put them in the mindset of being French Canadian. They would then walk over to me where I would give a speech listing all the reasons they should join the war. As I listed the points Zak and Cashel would argue with me, they then move on to the next part which was Chris’s speech. His speech was an actual speech given by Borden about conscription and as he got further into it Zak and Cashel got angrier and angrier until they start a mini protest with all the guests involved complete with signs under their seats. They then march to Anatolia who was voting. After seeing this they shout about how she was allowed to vote because her husband was overseas fighting in the war. After this Anatolia explains about why she voted for conscription. The group then move to the last station which is me again (I ran around the back of our set to get here during the speech). This is when I tell them that conscription has passed and they use excuses to get out of fighting in the war. This is the end of our presentation and they move on to the next group.
 To pull this off we had assemble a large amount of stuff (still not as much as the trench group though). The list included: 

2 desks, 2 chairs and a lamp for me

A podium, 6 chairs, 6 protest signs and spotlight for Chris

Ballot box, Ballot screen and desk for Anatolia

All this was on top of our costumes witch we all had to supply our selfs. I used my dads Air Force uniform from when he was in the RAF. 
 On the night itself it was a hectic race to get everything set up in time but we managed to pull it off just in time and the whole night went really well with rave reviews afterwards from those who participated. Thank you to everyone involved!

My set up 

https://youtu.be/HkhzVwNS_zM

The Halifax explosion. A not very well known event yet still one of the biggest explosions up to that point (of course it was dwarfed by the atomic bombs dropped on Japan at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

Example of some of the damage done by the explosion.
To make this video we started where we usually start, that being research. Luckily we already knew a lot of what happened from class but we still had to find things like the name of the ships involved and the exact time. The next step was to write the script which with Kirby and I and our combined writing skill didn’t take long. Next was the actual filming portion. For this we decided to shoot on location at a beach for that Oceanside aesthetic. After filming Kirby added in some effects and it was done. One of the biggest things I learned from this is how this was such big news for the whole of Canada and how the people of Halifax reacted. I was surprised at the way they banded together to help those effected. I also didn’t know how large the actual explosion was but once I saw pictures like the one above I realized why it was such a big deal.