Month: January 2024

We were assigned to write a multi paragraph essay on how the controversial figure Louis Riel was portrayed. Firstly, we took information from different sources such as textbooks to see how he was portrayed. In the more modern texts we found that he was portrayed more as a hero and a leader but in the older texts he was seen as a mad man preventing Canada from expanding. With all the sources I looked at, I felt like analyzing contrasting opinions would serve me best. I used two statues showing Riel in different ways and two historical videos that made me see Riel in different lights. I chose to write my essay on more of the historical side and how his choices reflected his portrayal of him. I didn’t have much peer critique so I thought I was close to being done. But little did I know I was many steps away from completing our assignment. The last step was for our teacher to give advice but I didn’t know they wanted me to take less of a historical and more of a simpler stance on just analyzing how he was portrayed. I found this difficult because most of my essay was historical so I had to rewrite most of it. When I found a format that was able to meet what the teachers wanted I found it to be way easier, and I easily completed our task. If I were to do this again I would have asked my teachers for advice on how they want my essay structured sooner so I could create my self a better baseline. Overall this was a very fun project and it taught me a lot about Riel and his works.

Peer Advice

Teacher Advice

Final Draft
A Real Riel Killer?

Louis Riel was a historically polarizing figure whose gaining interest has resulted in a more contemporary understanding of how he contributed to Canadian history. Riel has had many positive and negative portrayals depicting how he affected history. Some of the statues showing real life have very different depictions which make us wonder how he truly affected our history. Riel is portrayed in films like “War Stories” which show more of the historical perspective of him and how his action led to his portrayal. There are also other films such as the “Heritage Minute” showing a one sided positive perspective on Riel. Overall a these sources shape of vision of Riel and hope to undercover the real truth about Riel.

To see different perspectives on the so-called “truth” we should look to Lenny and Garboury, they were the creators of an abstract statue of Riel. In this statue Riel is depicted as a man who prevented Canada from growing. He is portrayed as a naked man trying to break free from the narrative as a killer and write a false narrative on how he is a hero. This shows how in 1973 some still saw Riel as the same stone-cold killer. Later in the late 1900s, a more updated statue by Marcien Lemay portrays Riel as a bold and strong leader. The statue shows him as one who stood up for the Métis people and died as a martyr. This proves the more contemporary understanding of Riel and how he sacrificed himself for his people.

Proof of some of the more updated portrayals of Louis Riel is the Heritage Minute showing the final moments of Riel’s life before he was hung. They portray him as a man who is being wrongfully hung and is proud of what he did for his people. If he were to be shown in a  more negative way he would be struggling and fighting but in the video, they show him more in peace and serenity. The final example which shows the negative portrayal is how he is depicted in war stories. In war stories it shows how the government’s reactions to when Riel drove back the surveyors, killed Thomas Scott, and the fighting against the government’s army. Since these events weren’t beneficial for the government, they cast a negative view on Riel and used these views and actions from Riel to kill him. Overall all these portrayals show Riel in many different lights, helping to establish Canada into the nation it is today. Louis Riel’s perception changed from an outcast and killer to an essential character who helped preserve Metis society. As we learn more about Riel we uncover his true identity and his contribution to Canadian history.

We were assigned to create a Rube Goldberg machine that symbolized the French Revolution. First, we were assigned to create an infographic to learn about our revolution and have the necessary skills to build our skills and connect it to the French Revolution. In case you didn’t know a Rube Goldberg is a chain reaction of items to perform a goal. We started out by planning out what each individual person wanted to do and we took one connection from each person and connected them all together. After we did that we tried to sort out all the flaws and got right to building. My idea for the project was to get a bouncy ball to go down ramps and ping pong back and forth off floorboards and then go down a ramp. I decided to cut out hard cardboard and manipulate it into the correct shapes and glue floor boards to some of them. This only took me a few days to finish my part of the project. After I built this I realized the ball was falling out before it hit the end so I had to change it to make it more fluid and consistent. Since I finished early I tried to help wherever else was needed. I didn’t know the hardest part was yet to come. Almost everyone had their machines done with around three days to go until the thing and my group thought they were done but now we still had to connect all of them together. I found this was the hardest part because my group decided to ignore it until the last minute and focus on decorations. I personally didn’t agree with this and tried to work on mine but I needed everyone else’s to be complete so I could work on mine. Unluckily one of our group’s machines got broken and I only got one day to connect them so I couldn’t get it working consistently. Sadly we never got a successful run-through before the presentation but we tried our best and hoped it worked during the actual fair. We had a nice setup and explained ours well but when it got to the actual machine it didn’t go well stuff that we expected to work didn’t work and the stuff we didn’t expect to work did. My machine worked every time I set it up but that didn’t really matter because the machines before didn’t work. Although it didn’t work I had a fun time doing this and I learned a lot from it. If I were to do this again I would have liked to double-check things and have a better time plan so we could deal with mistakes.

We were assigned to make a thrill us video we had to use the skills we learned on how to make a film into making one with no guidance at all. Our group decided to make a silent film to harness the suspense in the film. Since their were no words it proved to be a challenge because everything else was on higher scrutiny. We had to make sure every detail in our film was perfect because then the lack of words would stand out. Also, the background audio had to build suspense because it would keep the audience engaged. This proved to be a challenge because we kept getting noise in the background that interfered with our sound. We overcame this obstacle by going to more secluded places to get cleaner sound. The filming part was also hard because we had to have a stream of continuity by wearing the same clothes and shooting in the same place every day. This proved to be challenging because the forest had different weather everyday. Once we had compiled all our shots we had to put them together this was the toughest part because we realized we couldn’t use some of the shots. Since we didn’t realize this we were left in a time crunch and couldn’t get all the scenes how we wanted it. If we were to do this again we would have a better timeframe so we would know exactly what to do on each day and have room for mistakes.