The Halifax Harbour a beutiful and peaceful place until Dec 6, 1917.

The largest man made explosion in the world in 1917 happened in Halifax. It was not an act of war but because of war. Two ships collided in the Halifax harbour because of navigational miscommunication one being the Mont Blanc a french shipped packed with explosives headed to the western front. The Mont Blanc would light on fire and continue to billow smoke for about twenty minutes then suddenly the ship exploded. The ship was loaded with 226 797 Kg of TNT and other explosive materials creating the largest man made explosion to date. Our assignment was to put this devastating disaster into a news report. I will get you to watch it first then explain the reasoning behind the decision’s we made during the creation process. I have also been to Halifax and heard about this explosion and received a very short story about it while I was on a tour so it was nice to learn more about it.

https://youtu.be/sxOG_EWulN0

So first of all let’s talk about how we made the video. We used Tom’s amazing filming equipment, he had a green screen, camera, lights and a large area everything you need for filming a news show. Before we had could use all of this awesome filming equipment we had to create a script so we knew what we were saying. We created the general plot line for our skit and decided on one major aspect of our video that would make it different then all the other groups. We were going to play out the scene as if the explosion happened live, instead of a disaster report. We choose to do this as all the interesting things happened before and right after the explosion. We were able to fit in bits about the firefighters, frenchmen and spectators in a more interesting way then just getting a news anchor to say it. When we had a French sailor come up and take the mic away and tell everybody to run was probably the strongest scene in our skit. It portrayed all these French men who would be running of this ship and telling the English people to run away and nobody being able to understand what they are saying. Finally Cashel and Tom did a great job editing and our video was finished. We also kept our video short making it a powerful, concise, snapshot of this disaster. This was a very successful project in a video making point of view, but I didn’t really understand the learning outcome of this project just seemed like useless information about a disaster. I didn’t receive any context that would help me conceptualize the war other then some ships had a lot explosives and the Halifax harbour was poorly managed. So all in all I learned how to be a news anchor and about a human disaster.

Group Members Tom Cash Nash

My task for this assignment was to take a look into a soldiers life and take snapshot of his story by writing a fictional diary about his life during the First World War. This was a creative project as I had to pull on primary sources about my soldier for theoutline of my story and fill in the gaps with interesting fictional depictions of the war.

My soldier was Arthur Courtenay Williams he was a Canadian pilot who died before he even reached the front line. Arthur was apart of the Royal Flying Corps which is a British unit but they enlisted many Canadian pilots such as Arthur. The website  www.veterans.gc.ca provided me with some primary sources. The three primary sources I had to use was two news reports and a in memory plaque at Toronto University. In the news reports it describes the death of Arthur and Another pilot as they crashed into each other. I try to foreshadow the death of my character by talking about his friend and how he died. I added the part about his friends death because there was many pilots that died in training more than just Arthur. I also try to hint to the primitive nature of ariel combat talking about the faulty aircraft. I also talk about the Lewis gun a british machine gun mounted on many WWI British aircraft. Arthur was also an instructor in aerial gunnery thats why I added the scene about him training the newbie.

 

This diary will be different then most of my other classmates because my character never actually made it to the war. You can compare my story with the ones of Nash and Cash’s soldier diary’s.

Writing about Arthur was a challenge because he didn’t participate in the front lines, but I liked the challenge. I choose to focus on the aviator aspect of his life and talk about the mental thoughts that would go through his head as a WWI pilot. Without further a due the fictional story of Arthur Courtenay Williams.

soldier-diary

 

How to did World War I start? Well France and Germany…… Just kidding I won’t bore you with a play by play of how World War I began. I also wouldn’t be able to tell exactly how it started. What I can tell you is how I think it happened. To do this I created a video with my friend Nash. This video is created under the guidelines of our thesis for the video.

This our thesis.

The Great War was spawned by a complicated military and political alliance system between the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance and both sides readiness for war and imperialism desire, the Serbian and Austrian conflict with Archduke Ferdinand was just a coincidence the war was going to happen no matter what.

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

 

To create this video we had to delve deep into the political unrest of Europe leading up to the war. We had to research the reasons behind the creation of the Triple Entente and Triple Alliance and the fall out of other political alliance such as the one between Germany and Russia. Through our research we were clearly able to see why the war happened. The two alliance were clearly pitched against each other. The Triple Entente was created mainly to balance power in Europe to combat the Triple Alliance. The result was inevitable two major alliances geared to the teeth and willing to fight for for their imperialism desires.

To sum it all up the Great War was going to start no matter what the tension between the two alliance was just to high.

This week in class we have been learning about the pre World War l era in Canada also known as the Laurier Era. The Laurier Era was a time of prosperity for Canada as the government continued to open the west by pushing railway constriction, the government also bolstered Canada’s military and Canada also over saw the largest gold rush the world has every seen. During our studies one topic came up around French Canadians and their concerns over potential loss of French Culture because of industrialization. This industrialization was spurred on by pro dominantly English speakers. So to investigate this topic deeper I came up with an inquiry question and created a video.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vfntmGSp7OY

My video doesn’t really talk about the numbers behind the economics of Montreal, but the bilingualism that the economics drove. I chose to send my video down this path as I thought it was a little more interesting and engaging of a topic. It also helps us understand why Montreal is the way it is today being the most bilingual city in Canada. Doing this video allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of Montreal and how the two main languages played a role in everyday and business life.