Cashel's Blog

The Italian Campaign was the name of the Allied effort to gain control of Italy. This effort was mainly headed up by the Canadians, who had not yet played a major role in the war.

After taking Sicily by surprise, the Canadians started to push up through the south of Italy. While the Italians were quick to surrender, the Germans continued to fight. The Canadians slowly pushed the Germans out of city after city, however, these cities remained dangerous for Canadians even after the Germans were gone. Before the Germans were pushed out of a city, they would leave many devastating booby traps in their wake. These booby traps were disguised as everyday objects and claimed the lives of quite a few soldiers. At first these booby traps surprised Canadians, but eventually they began to expect them. So, how did the Canadians alter their tactics to deal with German booby traps?

Tactic #1: Be Paranoid

The Canadians’ first tactic to deal with booby traps was to be suspicious of literally everything. Soldiers were advised to not touch anything other than their own equipment.

Even the most commonplace objects had the potential to be booby traps. A rifle leaned up against a tree might have a bomb inside, a can of peas might be rigged with explosives, and even a lump of coal could explode in your hands. A sense of paranoia was felt throughout the Canadian force as they were warned to not touch anything. And this worked, as many booby traps were now left untouched and un-triggered. However, there was still always that one soldier who tried to kick an abandoned German helmet..(Boom!)

Tactic #2: Study Drawings of Booby Traps

Another way that the Canadians dealt with booby traps is they would commission artists to draw what booby trapped versions of everyday items would look like.

Soldiers were shown these images so that they would be more likely to know what a booby trap looked like. This tactic worked well and really did help prepare the soldiers. In fact, this tactic was not just used by the Canadians, but the whole allied force. The drawings would show the subtle differences between a normal object, and a booby trapped object.

If a soldier had seen these drawings, them they were much less likely to open a can of explosive tuna… (Again Boom!)

Tactic #3: Inspect Grenades

Canadians were also taught how to inspect some objects to see if they were booby traps. For example, Germans would sometimes leave grenades around a city. If a Canadian tried to use this grenade, it would explode in their hands. However, Canadians were taught how to inspect grenades to test their authenticity:

1. Unscrew the explosive cylinder from the wooden handle.

2. Remove the detonator and the fuze, which projects from the handle.

3. Unscrew the cap at the end of the handle and let the porcelain bead hand down.

4. Unscrew the delayed-action device in the top of the handle to make sure that the delay-action cylinder actually contains the compressed gun powder.

5. The grenades can then be put together again by carrying out the above operations in the reverse order….

These tips helped Canadians not explode from grenades that go off a little too early.

Tactic #4: Keep Your Morale High

Finally, Canadians had to try and keep a high morale. Since a booby trap would usually only injure or kill one or two people, one of their main purposes was to discourage the Allies. One minute you think you’ve won a battle, the next minute the can of peas your comrade opens explodes in his hands. This would rock you and the morale of your squadron would be devastated. And while soldiers had to be suspicious of items due to booby traps, this would make them way too suspicious. Some booby trap deaths were basically unavoidable, so the Canadians had to do the best they could to keep their morale up in spite of the occasional (or sometimes not so occasional) booby trap.

The Canadians has some pretty unique ways of dealing with German booby traps. The end result; low deaths caused by booby traps and the Germans finally being driven out of Italy.

Thing are moving along here in PLP. We are now studying World War II, from a Canadian perspective.

This Blogpost is similar to one I previously wrote.

We were asked to find a Canadian soldier who fought in WWII, and research them by examining primary sources, such as letters they wrote, their medical examinations, etc. I used this website to find a soldier.

I ended up choosing a French-Canadian soldier named Jean Eudes Poirier. Poirier was born in Quebec, but lived in Nova Scotia before enlisting in the army. He was a very small person, and did not seem to be great fit for the army. I also found out that he was bilingual, which gave the idea to add a copy of his diary entry in French as well.

 

I found it interesting to research a real soldier. There is a harsh reality in reading a letter the army sent to a woman informing her that her son was killed in battle. Interestingly, Poirier’s mother did not receive word of her sons death until she asked the army repeatedly why he was not receiving the cigarettes she sent him.

I enjoyed writing from Poirier’s perspective, however it took a lot of time to rewrite the letter in French.

All of the information that is in the letter is true and was gathered from primary sources.

Well, here is my diary entry from the perspective of Jean Eude Poirer:

(Click the entries to enlarge them).

Here in PLP, we are now studying the Roaring 20’s, and the Great Depression in Canada. To demonstrate our understanding of the topic, we were asked to come up with an inquiry question that had something to do with this time period.

I decided to look at how the Depression ended, and after some research, I found that many historians think that it ended due the the start of the Second World War. I found this intriguing since it took a tragedy (World War II) to end another tragedy (The Great Depression). That made me wonder, Would the Depression Have Ended if World War II Had Not Started?

First, I made this video to demonstrate how the Great Depression in Canada ended:

 

As you can see, World War II played a large role in the end of the Depression. But there were other factors in ending as well, such as the National Bank of Canada and the CBC.

Now that I had a good understanding of how the depression ended, I could look deeper into my inquiry question. I looked into the impacts that the war had on the depression. Specifically Canadian exports, government spending, and jobs in the military.

This mind map sums up what I found:

Open Prezi

As it says in the mind map, I came to the conclusion that Without the start of World War II, the Great Depression in Canada would have continued.

This is very interesting because it made me realize that as much of a tragedy as the war was, it did help lift Canada out of depression.

I learned a lot about the Depression and WWII from this project. I had no idea that a war could help end a depression. This surprised me at first, but after researching, it makes perfect sense. I got most of my information from the Canadian Encyclopedia which had a lot of valuable facts and stats about the depression and the war. In all, I enjoyed this project as it taught me something new about our country.

Wow, what an experience. To be honest, my first PLP exhibition was a lot more work than I expected it to be. But the result was a fun, engaging project, that left my group and me feeling proud of what we had produced.

Our task, in groups, was to create an interactive experience that taught our “audience” (parents, relatives, and friends) about a topic that we had been assigned. All of the topics were centred around the years leading up to, during, and after World War One. These topics also all had something about them that related to the growing sense of Canadian identity at the time. Our audience would make their way into the gym and through five interactive experiences, in chronological order.

My group was given the topic of the conscription crisis of 1917. This would prove to be a challenge as this topic was not especially exciting. My group consisted of myself, Chris, Zak, Anatolia, and Matthew. Our first course of action was to research or topics. And research we did. By the end of the week we were experts on our topic and felt that we could illustrate it well to our audience. Next, we wrote a script for our project and decided on what the experience would look like. We began rehearsing and making sure that our experience was exactly 3 minutes long (the amount of time that we had to present). Our project was almost ready.

On the day of the exhibition we frantically tried to set up our experience. We didn’t have much time and we finished just a mere 15 minutes before the exhibition began. Then, the parents began to come through our experiences and I became québécois for the next 3 hours.

When the audience entered our part of the gym, they were met by Zakaria and me, two québécois people. We introduced ourselves and made it clear that the audience was québécois now too. First, we led them to Matthew, a British general. He made an inspirational speech promoting the war effort but Zak and I quickly argued with him, explaining that it was not our war to fight in since we were not French or English. We engaged the audience and encouraged them to argue along with us.

Next, we made our way to Chris, who was playing the prime minister, Robert Borden. Chris was giving a speech about the war effort. We sat down and listened for a bit, with Zak and me scoffing at many of Chris’s remarks. Eventually Chris stated that Canada would attempt to pass mandatory enlistment. This outraged Zak and me. We began yelling and quickly started handing out signs to the parents. We led them in a protest, chanting: “Conscription is not fair! Conscription is not fair!” We then led the parents towards Anatolia, who was voting. We realized that she was voting in favour of conscription and stormed away outraged. Finally, we led the parents to Matthew again. This time, Matthew told the parents that conscription had passed and that they all had to fight in the war. Zak and I quickly began protesting this and then informed the parents that there was something they could do to get around having to fight. We told the parents that if they said they were farmers, religious, or very sick, then they would not have to fight. After that we sent them away to the next experience and ran beck to greet the next group of parents. By the end of the exhibition I was exhausted. My voice was gone and my throat was killing me. I realized that I had probably yelled “Conscription is not fair!” a couple hundred too many times.

I learned so much from the exhibition. Not only did I become an expert on the conscription crisis, I also learned how to work together to create an amazing exhibition. I found this type of project quite fun and learned 10 times as I would have from just studying for a test.

If I had to do this project again there is something I would do differently. I would have put more work into backdrops and props for our group since we did not have very many. But this was not a major problem and did not distract the audience from the great project that our group had produced.

There were many things that made our project successful. Having Zak and me guide the parents through our experience was a great idea since we could really push them to engage in our project. It also helped that I speak French, which enabled me to get really into character. Another thing that made our project successful was the people that were in my group. Everyone really embraced their characters wholeheartedly and did a great job as actors. I think that this really helped enhance the accuracy of our experience.

To conclude, I think that the exhibition was a great experience and I will remember it for a long time.

Here are some pictures from the exhibition:

Well, here we are, still studying World War One. Unlike previous blogposts though, this blogpost doesn’t focus on the action in Europe, and thankfully it isn’t a Puppet Show. On December 6th, 1917, two ships collided in Halifax’s harbour, the Norwegian Imo, and the French Mont Blanc, and the result was disastrous for the entire city.

The Mont Blanc was on its way into the harbour, and would later be on a due course for the western front, where it would supply firepower to the ammunition-starved allies. On its way out of the harbour, it was rammed by the Imo, which was travelling extremely fast and on the wrong side of the harbour. After the collision, the Mont Blanc caught fire and the panicked crew members began to swim away from the ship. The Mont Blanc was now emitting a plume of black smoke and crowds were gathering on the docks to watch the horrifying spectacle. Not many people knew about the Mont Blanc’s dangerous cargo, apart from the crew, so they saw no reason to evacuate the area. Some members of the Mont Blanc’s crew attempted to warn the civilians, but since the crew spoke only French, the people did not generally understand.

Finally, after nearly 20 minutes, the ship blew up, and the explosion was massive. In fact, it was the largest man made explosion ever (until the atomic bomb in 1945). Around 2000 people were killed, and 9000 were left injured. Most of the North end of Halifax was levelled by the explosion, and subsequent tsunami that washed through the city. This caused buildings to collapse, which sparked fires that raged through Halifax. During the explosion, windows were shattered with such force that glass shards were sent flying, injuring many and even decapitating some citizens. The explosion could even be heard in Prince Edward Island, a few hundred kilometres away. The explosion left Halifax devastated for a very long time.

To illustrate this event, I created a news report (set on the day of the explosion) with 3 other classmates (Tom, Chris, and Nash). We filmed our report in front of a green screen, and then found appropriate backgrounds to paste ourselves in front of.

 

Well, here is our news report, set in Halifax, 1917:

https://youtu.be/sxOG_EWulN0

Here in PLP, we are still studying World War One. For our next project, we had to write a diary entry from the point of view of a soldier that actually fought. Using this website, we found real soldiers that fought in World War One. Then we had to analyze any primary sources that were attached to our soldier of choice. Using those primary sources, and any other research we had done, we had to write a diary entry from any time during the soldier’s life.

I ended up choosing a soldier named Talbot Mercer Papineau.   He seemed like a normal soldier but after I did more research, it turned out that he was related to Louis Joseph Papineau, a very famous figure from Canadian history. I also found out that he was the cousin of Henri Bourassa, someone we had studied very recently.

All of the information included in the diary is true, based on primary sources and other bits of information that I found. Since Papineau had written a newspaper entry on the war, I included an excerpt of it in my diary entry.

These are some of the primary sources that I used:

 

I tried to interprete those sources and determine out Papineau’s personality. I then tried to incorporate his personality into my diary entry.

Well, here is my diary entry:

This assignment helped me understand how to anazlyze primary sources and transfer the information into a different assignment.

*An interesting fact, Papineau was portrayed in the CBC film, The Great War, by none other than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

*Note: The excerpt from the newspaper by Papineau is real and was found on this website.

 

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I was pretty excited when I found out that we were going on a trip just a couple of weeks into my first year as a PLP student. I had heard a lot about the legendary PLP trips, but nothing could prepare me for those 4 days in Oregon and Washington. The days were truly full of fun, and a lot of hard work. When I look back at the trip, I know that I will always remember it. It was a unique learning experience that I was to lucky to be a part of.

This was not just a trip where we could sit back and relax. In groups of 5, we were tasked with creating a “5 minute movie”. These movies had to explore a topic surrounding our unit, Hanford and the Manhattan Project. Within our groups, we each had to focus on a specific part of our larger topic, in other words, a sub topic. Our group, composed of Chris, Nash, Tom, Maria, and myself, decided to study the science behind Hanford’s B Reactor, and my subtopic was focused on the cleanup of the B Reactor. The trip to Oregon and Washington would teach us more about our topics and provide us with great footage to use in our movies. On the trip, we had the opportunity to interview ex-Hanford workers and scientists. We would also get to tour the actual B Reactor. In short, this trip would provide us with everything we needed to create a professional quality movie.

This is a copy of the script I used for my part of the movie:

Leaving early in the morning, our drive down was anything but easy. At the border, our bus got stopped for a random check, causing a long wait. After that, our drive went according to plan. We had a brief stop for lunch, and by late afternoon, we were through Washington and into Oregon. That night we had a relaxing dinner and saw a movie. The hard work would begin the next day.

The next two days were a blur of activity. We saw a running nuclear reactor, drove through the Columbia River Gorge, stopped at museums and eventually ended up in Hanford, Washington. In Hanford, we received a tour of the whole site, as well as a tour of the B Reactor. Stationed inside the reactor were experts who could answer our questions. These experts all have small appearances in our films, providing some information to the viewers. Although it only lasted a few days, the trip was full of fun and hard work.

Once we were back in Vancouver, we had to take stock of the footage we had collected and begin to piece together our movies. We then recorded ourselves narrating parts of our films and finally stitched all 5 parts together. We then handed our movie in as a first draft. The teachers then critiqued our movies and we made the appropriate changes. After handing in two more drafts, our movie was finally finished.

If I had to do this project again, there are many things I would do differently. I would have written my script for my part of the movie before we left, instead of from my hotel room in Hanford. I would have gone into the trip with my topic not so narrow and would have had a more open mind about changes to my topic. I would have also taken more videos which would have given me more possible footage for my movie.

For more specific information on what we did daily on the trip, this is the trip itinerary:

Here it is. The movie that we spent so much time making:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bkg6HoPTGds

 

 

Recently we have been learning about the time period before World War One in Canada, called the Laurier Era. I noticed a clear pattern during this period; the French Canadians were always being oppressed. However, out of this opression seemed to stem a strong feeling of nationalism.  After noticing this I started wondering if French Canadians still face opression today? I also wondered if French-Canadians still feel very nationalistic. I decided to dig a little deeper and find out.

This was my first Blogpost, so I decided to make an Explain Everything. I selected pictures that were relevant to my topic and put them into Explain Everything, creating “animated visuals” for my project. I also wrote a script explaining my topic. Then I put everything into iMovie and matched the animations with the audio.

Well, here is my project:

https://youtu.be/BGJ3WAqCakI