Canada is a truly unique place in the world today. It resembles smaller countries in Europe by its free services and friendly people, but is the second largest country in the world. Diversity is welcomed, no ethnicity or culture is looked at as less than others. These factors are some of the defining features of Canada’s Identity, but it wasn’t always this way. There was a time when Canada was half the size it is today in land, people, and unity. Tension was ever rising between the English, French, and First Nations groups. Disputes on land and rights were common with the government’s control reaching farther and farther into people’s lives. But why was this happening? What caused the period of stability found before to suddenly break? The answer to this lies mainly within one thing, an imbalance of power. For the past month or so, PLP 9 has been working on a humanities unit in which we are looking for an answer to the question How does power alter relationships? If you want to learn the answer to a question which most societies are built upon, then read on.
Our Unit
As usual, the unit began with me because of my tallness hanging up the unit sign beside the projector. This marked the end of our previous WW1 unit and began our journey westward in history as we learned about the CPR moving from Manitoba to BC (to learn about my real life experience with the CPR, click here!). Our first assignment was a interactive web quest where we learned about the Métis people of Manitoba. The Métis are a First Nations group from the prairies that are a cross between First Nations and French blood. They were heavily discriminated against by the primarily English government and found their land slowly being taken from them. We learned that this issue is still seen today even though reconciliation is slowly occurring.
Our Questionably Angled Question
The importance of learning about the Métis was revealed in our Novel Study, which was a graphic novel about the life of Louis Riel written by Chester Brown. Louis was a Métis man who became the leader of their provisional government that fought for their rights. The book takes a historically accurate approach to his story keeping most of the original facts intact and exploring all sides involved. I liked this for there were no specific villains or hero’s just people fighting for what they believed was right. After each section of the book, we were given the task of writing a summary describing who we felt was in power for this section of the book and how this influenced others, along with how Louis was portrayed.
Louis Riel – A Comic Strip Biography – By Chester Brown
The Heritage Minute we Watched on the Topic
The first two summaries along with the fourth were written, but we decided to try something different for the third. To practice a new medium of video making we were asked to create our first fully animated humanities video as a summary. For me, I wanted to create something serious and powerful, for the story of Louis Riel is an important part of our history. It’s about a man, who fought with everything in his power to do what was right for his people, but couldn’t succeed against the sheer power of the government. I felt this story needed to be honoured and thus put a lot of effort into creating this video. It can be seen below:
After we had learned about the conflicts of Manitoba, it was time to move westward and we soon arrived in our own history, in British Columbia. This was a fascinating topic for two reasons, one being it is our own history and two being that British Columbia was it’s own thriving settlement. The coast was perfect for imports from Asia and with the dawn of the gold rush in the Cariboo, the economy was flourishing. Many people from all over Canada, China, and Europe were coming in hopes of getting wealthy. This lead to the BC wanting people to be able to travel more efficiently, and said they would join in confederation if a railway was built connecting them to the rest of the CPR. Although some people didn’t agree with this decision, on July 20 (My birthday!) 1871, B.C officially became part of Canada.
The Current Railway Systems of British Columbia
Building British Columbia
The overview above briefly talks about British Columbia’s history, but what actually happened? What lead to it becoming the thriving province it is today? Well, it all started with the First Nations people who had lived on the land since the last ice age or longer. For thousands of years, the existed separately from the rising world in Europe, until the early 18th century when fur traders began to arrive. B.C soon became mainly managed by the Hudson’s Bay Company and white settlers started villages in the area. British Columbia didn’t massive growth however, until 1858, when people struck gold (literally). The gold rush lead to a massive flood of immigrants from across Canada, Europe, and China hoping to strike rich in the Fraser Canyon, the Klondike, and later the Caribou. This lead to villages being built everywhere, along with existing forts booming with business. When the gold rush was over, many people stayed in B.C which allowed the suddenly decreasing economy to survive.
Men Brave the Treacherous Conditions of the Klondike
British Columbia was in a dire situation at this point for they were thousand of dollars in debt and their main source of income was on it’s way out. This is when B.C looked to the option of joining Canada. Although some were against this and some even felt it would be better to join the United States, most ruled in favour of joining and they soon became part of Canada. This was however, with the promise that a railway would be completed within 10 years, which leads to the next big point in B.C’s history. The railway in British Columbia was going to be a big challenge for it had to cut straight through the Rocky Mountains. Not enough workers were found in Canada, so a man named Andrew Onderdonk set out for China to recruit men. Many applied and traveled on ships to work in Canada. These men were poor and the opportunity for a better life was tempting, even if they were only payed a dollar a day for back breaking labour. Many endured mining, working with deadly dynamite and nitroglycerin, and the fierce conditions of the Rockies. It is said that there is one dead Chinese man for every mile of the track.
A Brutally Honest Heritage Minute of the Dangers of Railway Work
Our Project
Once we understood pre World War One Canada, it was time to use our knowledge to create a project. We were given the choice of a variety of topics relating to this time period, and would use our animation skills we acquired during the summary to create a video. This animation would be to tell the story of how a particular individual or event changed a society through power. I decided after some deliberation that I wanted to do my video on Wilfred Laurier, the 7th Prime Minister of Canada. Being the first French Canadian in this position Laurier was able to appeal to both sides and bring a new era of unity to Canada. To start things off, I began to research Laurier. Although the focus of my topic is about his use of his power, I decided it would be best to first research about him as a person. I did this for in order to tell a good story, you need good, flushed out characters.
Click Here for more on Wilfred Laurier
After this I researched the time period itself to see what was going on in Canada. This was useful for I found many connections in the events occurring simultaneously with Laurier’s story (such as the trial of Louis Riel). At this point, I was already planning my animation style and wanted to use a Polaroid picture style approach (see here for an example). This was going to take a lot of time and effort, but I felt like it would be a good option. Once my research was completed, it was time to move onto the planning phase, which occurred through the storyboard. Unlike a live action storyboard, our animation storyboard only needs to have the images, instead of setting and angles which made things a lot quicker. I made sure to take my time on this phase for whatever appeared here would most likely appear in my video. Once this was complete, it was time to move onto filming.
A Page From my Storyboard
On the first day of filming, I went outside with my iPad and paper models, and started to shoot. However, I was only able to get a few shots done in an entire class and realized I needed to revise my options. This lead me to my final decision for my animation style which would be to use Keynote. I instantly found creating my project a lot easier and quickly flew through creating my slides. However, things became a little more challenging when I moved onto editing. When dealing with Keynote animation, the only way to transport it into iMovie is through screen recording which leads to a lot of cropping. You also won’t have the audio and sound effects in the clips like you would in live action, which take a lot of work to create. However, I was able to create a string first draft for our initial peer critique, which was received well.
Draft 1
My Draft 1 Critique
My first draft was solid, but my classmates made sure to remind me not to go overboard when carrying on. I kept this in mind during my second draft, which received similar critique. At this point I had a only under a minute of animation, so my third draft would be where most of the work took place. This proved to be especially true for my iMovie began to experience technical issues around this time. Unfortunately, I was not able to participate in the 3rd critique because of this, but managed to get it done soon after. This was an excellent lesson for me in being able to deal with spontaneous situations and I am proud of how I handled it.
My Second Draft
My Draft 2 Critique
My Final Draft
Reflection
This unit was a rather short compared to some of our others, but important non the less. As this year has been focused on Canadian History, everything we learned has been interesting, but this unit was especially so because we ventured into familiar territory learning about British Columbian History. Before now, I had no idea of the history of BC, and ever really thought about it. However, now that I know about my province’s beginnings, I feel more connected to it and the places found within it.
Another thing I feel more connected to, although it might sound weird, is my family. This is because my ancestors where the Ukrainians and Dutch who arrived in Manitoba when being forced out of Russia, and now I know their story. As for the skills I have picked up during this unit, I feel that I understand the need for planning better then ever. This is because I had a hard time managing all of my different projects at the same time during this last month, and feel with a little bit more planning I could have focused my energy better into the tasks which required it, such as Blue Sky. I also learned the importance of being flexible, and how it helped me in a time when things didn’t go to plan. I will keep all these things in mind in the future, and feel ready to take on whatever grade 10 humanities has in store.