People’s Podcast – Immigration after WW2

In this project we explored the world of podcasts, and learned how to make our own! We combined this knowledge with our knowledge of WW2 to create an interesting podcast in partners, about a topic of our choice. The driving question for this project was “How did lives and conditions change and stay the same for Canadians after WW2?”

We started by listening to some podcasts that Ms.Maxwell suggested, and figuring out how podcasts are made to get the attention of the audience, and make their podcast interesting and fun to listen to. For Milestone 1 I listened to ‘Kind World’ a Podcast by WBUR, Boston’s NPR station. I listened to an episode titled “The Thank You Project” where the two hosts, Yasmin and Andrea, interview a woman who wrote a novel called “The Thank You Project” about her year writing thank you letters to everyone she knew.

I found this podcast and specific episode very interesting and I admired how the layout and how it flowed between each topic.

 

Kind World Podcast – Milestone 1

The other part of this project was reading a book about indigenous people’s and their struggles since the last world war. The story we read was “The Absolutely True Diary Of A  Part-Time Indian” and we read it in sections and at the end of each week we would meet up to discuss what happened. The novel touched on racism that indigenous people still experience and it can sometimes be a hard read.

 

The second milestone was choosing a partner and topic for our own podcasts. Izzy and I joined together and originally wanted to do LGBTQ+ 🏳️‍🌈 but decided on immigration instead because another group wanted our first choice more. We chose immigration and how it has changed since WW2. We also focused on how different generations immigrated and interviewed people of diverse ages. We started our research with an outline. We connected our driving question to the topic, wrote down questions we had to research, and thought of potential interviewees. We split up our different research topics and started searching for answers. 

Immigration in Canada Research

Izzy and I then had to write the script for our podcast. We chose 3 people to interview, my grandma Elizabeth who immigrated in the 1950s from Scotland, my mom’s coworker who immigrated in the 70s from Uganda, and our classmate Jade who immigrated a few years ago from South Africa. We wrote out our questions for each interview and our info sections for in between. Below is our script. 

Podcast script

While writing our outline and final script there were key literacy skills we learned and used. Narrative skills were very necessary for this project as we had to tell different people’s stories and explain struggles, procedures, etc.  Along with proper vocabulary to make sure we were addressing sensitive situations with respect and knowledge. 

After interviewing everyone and piecing our recordings together we almost had a podcast! We heard so many cool stories from interesting people, it was fascinating for both of us. We learned how continuity and change relate to immigration in Canada and how different situations can be. They all came to Canada but that’s pretty much the only similarities between each story. Have a listen to our final podcast below! I hope you can enjoy each persons different perspective and outlook on their immigration story. 

I think Izzy and I did a good job at working together in this project and had a great  outcome because of that. So, How did lives and conditions change and stay the same for Canadians after WW2? When answering this question with immigration, is say that racism was still present, but less obvious or less direct. More people immigrated after the war as it was finally possible again, and it became a more normal thing to do. My grandma Elizabeth immigrated soon after the war and took a boat over that cost her £60, while now if you wanted to immigrate the expenses would go on forever. The continuity and changes are easy to see if you just take a peek at immigration over the last 70 years.

 

Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed our final product!