Case for a nation
“How can understating of nationalism in the past help us understand today”. That was the driving question for the case for a nation project that I recently worked on in humanities. The goal was to learn about nationalism as a whole and get a better understanding of how past nationalism has shape our world today.
In order to achieve that understanding I worked on multiple key assignments that include:
- A nationalism jigsaw which gave us a better starting understanding of some examples of nationalism in the past and the definition of what nationalism can be.
- I also made a current events project where I had to find recent current event that showed or connected to an aspect of nationalism.
- I worked with a group to learn about an example of nationalism which was the joining of confederation in Canada and its effects. The simulation that we did on this topic was we picked a colony (mine was New Brunswick) then learn about it and make some requirements that would have to be met in order to join confederation, we then held a simulation of a meeting of the colonies where we presented these requirements as well as looking at other peoples requests and after getting that info we made our choice on weather or not we would join confederation.
- Shortly after thee previous task I chose a topic of nationalism from a list of many from around the world to research. I was grouped with two other classmates that chose the same topic and worked to create a caption and 3 images that would demonstrate the result of the nationalism in the chosen topic and how it effected Canada
Looking back at these assignments I think that they helped me understand the topic if nationalism greatly and have given me a different view on places around the world and how nationalism has both benefited and made some negatives in Canadas history and the effects that they have on today.
I think that the majority of this project and the final result is definitely the images and caption even though it is only for one example it shows how something that at the time can impact and have important effects on today and in some cases still effect today. My topic that I chose was the building/creation of the Canadien Pacific Railway. I found a lot of information about this and started by making a storyboard explaining the basics and a sort of timeline of the railway. 
Through my research and work that I did with my group members I found that overall the railway had a great majority of positive consequences on canada at the time and still has lots of positives as the railway still runs today. But I found also that the big negative that is connected to some negatives of nationalism is that when the railway was being built they enticed a lot of Chinese immigrants to come work on the railway saying that it would change their life and help them start a new life here in Canada. After many of the immigrants decided to build they found out that they were being treated very poorly being give barley any food or shelter and being payed sometimes less than a dollar a day for almost 8-10 hours of work each day. I found this not too surprising at the time because back then the immigrants were not valued as much as today and were barley ever taken good care of. 
After all our research we settled on our images and were able to also creat a good caption.
After all the research I found that the final project was not very large as it was just 3 images and a caption and it felt at the time even smaller of a result as the work was split between my group of 3 people. However I am happy with the result and learned a lot about the concept of nationalism.