Welcome! Today’s post is all about our most recent project, the Greatest Canadian! We’ve been working on this project for around 5 weeks now, and after all this, I’ve come away with a greater sense of Canadian identity and a podcast I’m really proud of! There’s definitely room for improvement next time, but I’ll expand of that later on in the post. Let’s get into it!

We started off this wonderful project with building our knowledge. Knowledge on what you ask? Knowledge on Canadian identity, storytelling, and what makes a story great. Starting off with Canadian identity, we discussed what makes Canada, Canadian. I really enjoyed learning about this, and after my grade 9 year in Switzerland, I really liked using my brain to think about something other than french nonsense. Our discussion on the Miss G. Project prompted a really interesting discussion from our group. If you want to check out the Miss G. project, click here! I was the only female in my group when we were talking about it and I think it was interesting to see what the guys in my class thought about a program like this. I was pleasantly surprised buy how progressive they are and I’m proud that I have knowledgeable dudes in my class.

Storytelling is something that I’ve been working to improve these past few years, so it was nice to have an opportunity to explore deeper into what makes a story truly great. I’ve also had issues in the past with finding my own voice when writing, so this podcasting project was truly a perfect fit. Throughout this project, I feel like I’ve definitely made serious progress in both these skills. 

Learning about storytelling always fascinates me. I love reading and listening to audio books or podcasts, so when I’m presented with tools to explore deeper, I always jump at the chance. Reading a poem by Edgar Allen Poe and then analyzing it, was an cool look into ways I can explore more about the deeper meaning behind the words written by the author and the tone put behind them.

Weekly posts have been something that we’ve started doing, as of this second project. I’ve appreciated having the chance to reflect each week and take some time to think about all that we do within the course of just a few days. Check out all the posts from this project below!

Week One

Week Two

Week Three

Week Four

Week Five 

I started off this project with no idea who I was going to name my, “Greatest Canadian”. I knew I wanted do do a woman as soon as we started learning about the show that inspired this project. The show is called the Greatest Canadian and it ran on CBC for several weeks back in the fall of 2004, and it aims to name one person Canada’s, “Greatest Canadian”. Various hosts name their choice, then spend the episode trying to convince the viewer that their Canadian is the best. 

This was essentially what our podcast was aiming to do as well, but our choices were much more diverse than what the original show had chosen. The Canadian’s chose by the show’s presenters were all men, predominantly white. Our class had people hailing from all over, with different cultures, worldviews, and aspirations. 

As soon as I started doing some research, one woman caught my eye. Justice Bertha Wilson, the first ever woman on the Supreme Court of Canada in 107 years. Her meteoric rise to becoming one of Canada’s most influential Justices at the time, would sweep Canadian’s off their feet. She wrote some of the most important judgments regarding equality law, and paved the way for other women judges to do great things. 

All of this drew me to Justice Wilson. Her story has such an incredible rise and when we started on our story structures, this definitely helped me out. She started out in Scotland, with no clue how important law would become to her, and ended up as the first woman on the Supreme Court! That is an incredible feat if I do say so myself. 

I really enjoyed researching this incredible woman, and working towards a greater impact on how she shaped Canada. While the MLA format for citing out sources is rather tedious, I still was happy to have made a reasonable research document. 

Something that I usually appreciate but almost always forget to do, is an outline of whatever I’m working on. The assignment that instructed us to create an outline for our episode was a great reminder that I have this tool at my disposal, and that I should use it more frequently. I find that it helps me structure my thoughts way clearly and decide what is worth keeping, and what is just junk. 

This stepping stone also gave me a chance to look at what was missing from this my podcast, and how the final draft was going to turn out. 

For our podcast script, I decided that I wanted to go word for word, instead of bullet points or a rough outline of the topics I had to cover. I find that when I go with the ladder, I miss important points and my words feel inelegant. My choice was definitely the correct one for this project. I like how thought out my argument was. My rough draft wasn’t horrible, but it definitely had lots of improvement that needed to be done. 

The final draft of my script left me with something that I was proud of and I think I did Justice Wilson, justice.

As with each PLP project, we find some way to tie the real world into our learning. The way we did this in this project, was by incorporating interviews into our podcast. This is definitely a skill that I’m excited to continue working on throughout the year, but in this project, I definitely learned how much room there is for improvement. 

I started the interview process by finding several good candidates. Unfortunately, the first few didn’t pan out. Then, the next few didn’t pan out either. Eventually, I went with a really knowledgeable grade 12 named Maia, to complete my interview with. That went pretty well, but I know that for the next few interviews I do, I need to do more preparation in order to get the best information I can. 

But then! Out of the blue, the acting director of the Wilson Moot, a debate competition held in Wilson’s honour, sent me an email! This second interview went super well, and I think it definitely reinforced my point and added to my podcast. 

Part of this project was discussing theme and how to form a thesis statement. I think this was an enjoyable part of the project because it really involved twisting words into a deeper understanding of either the theme or the thesis in the media being presented. It used parts of my brain I didn’t even know existed. Very fun activity. 

My final podcast is one that I’m actually really proud of! I worked so hard on the mixing, the script, and making sure the content fit my thesis. If the suspense of what the final podcast turned out like hasn’t killed you yet, take a listen down below! 

I hope you enjoyed the podcast, If you’ve got any feedback for me, feel free to leave it down in the comments!

 

Our last project, as our final celebration, we created a short podcast episode in small groups. Ben, Grace, Brenton, and I created a round table discussion in garage band. You can hear it here!

 

Thanks for reading, and I can’t wait to share with you about our next project, on WW2. 

-Zo