Since January, we’ve been learning about the events leading up to confederation, beginning with the fall of New France. It’s been very interesting. I’ll start with a timeline.

1763- Fall of New France

1791- Constitutional Act
This is the act that created upper and lower Canada

1800s- Troubles starting to arise in the colonies
Many people were starting to feel troubled in the colonies. Crops were failing, the economy sucked, and the govt. was not doing well.

1837-38- Rebellions of 1837-38
After several years of being repressed, many people from both Upper and Lower Canada decided they’d had enough. There were two rebellions, which both quickly came to an end. What it did do was show Britain the problems of the Canadas.

1840- Act of Union
After the rebellions, Lord Durham was sent to the Canadas to investigate the rebellions. His conclusion was that a United Canada would solve their problems. So instead of upper and lower, they became West and East.

1867- Confederation of Canada
Lead by John A. Mackdonald and George Brown, the BNA act was created and signed by four colonies: Canada East, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Canada West.

During the weeks of this unit, we learned about all of these things. I thought it was cool to learn about how this country came to be.

For the English side of this, we were reading short stories about early Canada and Pre- Confederation, including The Idyl of the Island, and The Moosehide Gloves. We analyzed the types of stories and answered questions on them. It was very interesting.

During this process, we were also watching Heritage Minutes. Heritage Minutes are short, one minute videos made by Historica Canada. They are meant to teach people about Canadas heritage. So of course, being in PLP, we had to create our own. To get advice, our teacher got us in contact with a person from Historica Canada! We got to video chat with her in class and it was awesome.

We were divided into six different groups, in six different categories. I got in my first choice, the Battles and Rebellions group. We decided to do it on the Battle of St. Eustache.

Battle of St. Eustache
The battle of St. Eustache occurred in 1837 at the St. Eustache Church in Montreal. It was the Patriotes last stand against the British soldiers. The patriotes took refuge in a church, but the British burned the church and the patriotes were forced to jump out the windows. A few died, but most were taken prisoner. Some were even sent to the British colony in Australia, helping in the settlement of Melbourne.

So, we had to turned this into a video. Our first step was creating a script. We had several turns of critique, but eventually we got it done!

Next, we made a storyboard. Our first one was illegible, so it took a few revisions. Eventually, we got it done, and could film!

Our first draft sucked. We were unable to get all of our group members together, so I ended up playing all of the Patriotes. Lots of other things were missing.

Our second draft was also pretty bad.

https://youtu.be/i6skrfSGKZY

But our critique for this one was pretty cool. We had another socials 9 class come in and give us feedback. So, yeah. We are special PLP kids. Some don’t get it. Here’s our feedback.

Our third draft was was better, I thought. These ones were sent to our contact in Historica Canada.

https://youtu.be/T5eJDlXxo-E

I learned a lot from this project. Filming skills and techniques were a huge part of it. I also learned a lot about group work. My group wasn’t exactly super motivated in the project, so I had to work around that. I’m very proud to say that I didn’t freak out at anyone during this project. It’s real progress for me.