Welcome back to another great year of learning!

As our second proper PLP project in grade 10, we studied and created memorials to apologize to certain minorities living in British Columbia.  We worked extensively, learning about different aspects of our history and the injustices we imposed on these groups.  Overall, it was a really interesting project, and I learned a lot about British Columbia’s dark history.

Driving Question:  How can we keep an apology alive so the wrongs of the past are remembered and not repeated today?

To start of the project, we had to research about past memorials, and British Columbia’s dark discriminatory history.  Multiple different races, like the Chinese, Japanese, and South Asians were prejudices against throughout the development of Canada.  These different and diverse races all had unfair laws enforced onto them, only due to the colour of their skin.

The Chinese population had multiple discriminatory immigration polices implemented against them.  At first, they started with head taxes, charging a $50 dollar fee every time a Chinese person moved to Canada.  This did not stop them though, which led to a third of the population in British Columbia being Chinese Canadians.  Overtime, they increased the price from $100, $500, and eventually outright banning the immigration of Chinese people.  Not only that, as the European population slowly increased, they were faced with increased racism.

The second population that were discriminated against were the South Asians.  Like the Chinese population, Punjabi people moved over to Canada at around the gold rush.  They came in great numbers, which eventually led to a hate of them.  Since India was under the British commonwealth like Canada, they were unable to outright ban their immigration.  However, the government officials were able to think up a way to stop the immigration of the South Asians.  They implemented the one passage law, making all immigrants only be able to move to Canada if they came straight from their country of origin.  This caused the Indians to be unable to move over, due to them having to transit through either Japan or Hong Kong.

The last major population that were oppressed in British Columbia’s history, was the Japanese.  As World War II started, Canadians slowly came to fear of Japanese people living in BC.  This led to them interning them in different places across the countryside.  Thousands of Japanese loss their privileges and riches, which included houses, boats, and personal belongings.  Not only did they lose them, but the government of BC sold each item off in an auction, making it impossible for them to reclaim their items.  Only 9 years after the war were they allowed to leave these camps, and go back to the beach.

Why would they move to Canada?

At this time, gold was discovered in North America and saw people were able to make a lot of money.  This caused most people saw North America as a “golden land,” they heard of being able to get untold riches if they immigrated over.  The Asians started off in California, and slowly worked their way up towards British Columbia.  Though they were heavily mistreated against, they continued to work in hopes of being able to hit the jackpot.

Research:

https://dodos-win-hw2.craft.me/LiFZ9BQRuvaRFp

What were we creating for our project?

For our project we were tasked to create memorials for one of the targeted groups within BC’s history.  To do this, we worked in groups of three to plan, build and reflect on the assigned group we worked on.  I worked with Daniel and Caden, to create a memorial that reflected Chinese past hardships.

We thought out the idea to create traditional Chinese cut outs that symbolize the push and pull factors of living in Canada with a Chinese person in the middle.  We also encased it in a luggage to show that the Chinese people never were able to fully open up their culture, and that it was still left in their suitcase.  We also added lights to shine through the paper cut outs to make it nice.

To conclude this project, I think that this project went pretty well, and my group worked great together.  We were able to finish our project even in a short time span that we were given.  If I did this project again, I would like to have gotten an interview with someone who has researched this topic, and what there opinion might be.

Thanks for reading

-Chris