Welcome back. In this post, I’m going to talk about my most recent humanities project: Save Juno Beach. The project was about the importance of Canada’s role in World War II and why we should learn about it, as well as learning about World War II in general. We started the project by watching a part of the movie ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ which helped put into view how atrocious and bloody the war was. Once we finished watching the movie, we learned about the Normandy landings, and more specifically, the Juno Beach landing, which was the area of the beach Canada was tasked with capturing.  (Below are photos of Juno beach)

Then, we looked at the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression and analyzed why they were important historical events. We covered what made the Roaring Twenties such an amazing time, whether that be the mass production of cars, the Jazz Age, or the new motion pictures that were starting to be shown. Then, we talked about how it all came crashing in a huge, globally felt economic collapse we now call the Great Depression. To finish the first part of the project, we had to fill in a chart that’s used to determine if something is historically significant or not. The chart had five different sections of criteria used to help determine if the war was important, then one last area used to write an in-depth explanation for your reasonings. 

For the second big part of the project, we were put into a group of four people and given a topic related to World War II and Canada, and told to create a presentation that we would then present to the class. The topic my group was given was ‘How did World War II affect Canada’s and America’s relationship?’ We each focused on one part of the topic to research. I focused on the question: How does our relationship with the US impact our daily life? Click here if you want to see what my group and I ended up with from our research. 

For the last and biggest part of the project, we were tasked with writing an essay about the driving question for our project (Why is it so important to learn about Canada’s involvement in WWII?). I had never written an essay before, so I was a bit nervous that it would be super hard and take tons of time, but luckily it didn’t. To start, we had to make and get a thesis approved; the thesis I handed in and that got approved was: ‘It’s important that we understand the significance of World War II and Canada’s role in it because it was a huge part of 20th-century history and had a huge impact on Canada’s future.’ Once that was done, I just had to write an outline for the essay, then expand on the ideas and research more. Once that was done, I had a finished essay. Or so I thought. Then we spent the last few days of the project asking people for critique and then making our essays better. Luckily, in the end, I was left with an essay I was happy with and proud of. Click here to read the essay. 

Thanks for reading. Have a good one.