Thought 44: Gold Digger ⛏️
How did the discovery of gold shape our province and its people?
“Wake up. Its the first of the month.” – Jordan Carter
If you couldn’t tell from the quote above, this is the first blog post of PLP 10. For our first project of the year, we picked things up where we left them at the end of grade 9, with the BC gold rush.
We began the project like most other PLP projects, with a lot of research. We looked at several websites, documentaries, and other sources for 2 weeks to get an idea of life in the early colonial days of BC. We learned about the prospectors who came to BC, the areas mined, conflicts that took place, and generally the conditions of life in BC during the 1850s.
After we finished research, we were assigned to conduct further research on a group of immigrants who came to BC for the gold rush. I was assigned to research African American immigrants, and I learned a lot of interesting information on the history of Black Americans in BC.
After we created a research notes document in Craft, we began to assemble Character Cards. I decided to name my character Vincent Coakley. I got the name from Seycove’s resident philosopher, Ben Yerxa. I also used my excellent photoshop skills for my character’s picture.
Finally, I compiled all of my knowledge and research to create a short story about my character. For my story, I slightly deviated my theme away from the gold rush. My story takes place during the time of the BC gold rush, but the characters aren’t very involved with gold mining. Instead, I decided to focus more on the people involved in the chaos of the time. Some of my inspiration from the story came from the movie Taxi Driver, and for the picture I used at the end of the story, I traced a frame from Breaking Bad.
To answer the driving question, the gold rush increased settlement in BC, allowed for BC to become a colony, and later a province of Canada, and created a culture of immigration in BC.