Our project where we learn about ww2 is finished. 🙁

 

A French farmer driving a horse-drawn water cart waves his cap at the crew of a Light Tank Mk VI of 13/18th Royal Hussars, 1st Infantry Division’s recce regiment, near Arras, 12 October 1939.
(Source)

This was a project I’ve been looking forward to for years, and to finally have finished it, I, frankly don’t know what to look forward to next.

Over this project, I learned how to make an essay that not only is able to prove a point, but use fancy words to do it, I also supposedly learned about the events that happened during the war.

Another fun part of this project was my presentation on the Norwegian and Danish campaigns in WWII. I had to cut around 10 slides off of it to make it presentable, and what I presented was a bare-bones presentation. Altogether though, it let me show my passion for war and all that it entails.

Additionally, me, Jackson, Mackenzie and Francis made a PowerPoint about the formation of nato, and what nato membership means for all involved.

After “learning” through PowerPoints and Kahoots about the preamble to, and events of the Second World War, we set to work creating essays to help us demonstrate our learning. I chose the topic of “Canadians should be more proud of what they’ve done to make the world a safer place” to answer the driving question of “Why should Canadians learn about our contribution to the Second World War”

You can read my essay below.

Through the century following the First World War, Canada and its government has always committed to peace in the world, be it in Spain during their civil war, or saving lives from Serbians in Bosnia, our contributions to world peace are a thing all Canadians can be proud of. Canadians should take more pride in our contributions to making the world a safer place.

The defeat of authoritarianism has made the world a safer place because imperialist and expansionist nations are kept in check by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the United Nations (U.N.) Canadian troops were able to outfight, encircle and destroy some of the best German  troops during the campaign to liberate Europe from its fascist oppressors, including the Panzer Lehr division, as well as several SS divisions, even at great cost to our forces (Source). Canadian volunteers assisting the U.N. held the line during the Korean War to protect against communist Chinese and North Korean aggression, defeating their assailants at Kapyong despite both being encircled and a lack of numbers (source). NATO and Canadian contributions have protected against modern imperialism by protecting smaller nations such as Latvia via sending troops and Ukraine, by sending arms sanctioning Russia and during periods of Russian aggression (Source) (Source)

Canadian contributions to foreign wars have saved countless civilian lives. Canadian peacekeepers with the United Nations have protected civilians in Somalia, Bosnia, and most recently, in the Middle East. Additionally, if not for liberation by Canadian troops, countless more Dutch civilians would have died from starvation through the winter of 1944-45. Canadian contribution of uranium and other materials to the manhattan project saved countless Japanese lives by forcing the war to a prompt and decisive end without the need for a landing on the home islands, where civilians would rather die than be occupied by foreign troops. (Source)

  Despite our crucial contributions to the defeat of Naziism and authoritarianism, Canada still focuses our attention on the defeats we have suffered. Our education talks equally, and sometimes in more detail about the defeats suffered at Hong Kong in Dieppe, than about our decisive victory in the battle of the Atlantic and our other contributions to the war such as our fighting in the Italian campaign, helping our allies, including Poland, France and her colonies, India, South Africa and the United States. Canadian innovations like our advanced shipbuilding methods are often overlooked or attributed to others such as the American yard at Puget Sound despite building ships slower than some Canadian yards. Opinions about the Canadian’s peacekeeping have been clouded by incidents like the Somalia Affair (Source), and our failure to prevent the genocide in Rwanda (Source), overlooking the lives saved by our troops directly disobeying orders to ignore enemy forces in places like Croatia (Source)

Though Canadians have been successful and saved civilian lives in every war we have participated in, we do not take enough pride in our victories and contributions to world peace. This mentality of reflecting on our what we did wrong means that we don’t take the time to reflect on what we did right.

Additionally we got cake on the last day so that was good.

Overall, this project helped me learn to write more formally, I think this will help me find employment in a field that uses lots of formal writing, like law, or politics.

But let us not forget all those who died to keep our world free.

A destroyed M5 “Honey” Stuart from the 4th County Light Yeomanry (Sharpshooters) in the town of Villers-Bocage.
(Source)