There’s no denying that worldwide conflict doesn’t happen and everyone on this planet gets along, but what comes to mind when you hear that word? One of the biggest events in history took place in 1914, World War I. Known for being a gruesome war with around 40 million casualties, it was one of the deadliest disagreements to this date, however, events like this bring significance and shape the world we live in today. In this post, World War I will be the focus, but more importantly, Canada’s role.

As we’ve been talking about Canadian history in grade nine social studies, it only makes sense to leave the most essential event to last. So to help us along in this terrifying yet interesting adventure, we’d constantly be looking at the question of “how might we use artifacts and film to show the significance of WWI?” The only information we had been given was that we will be hosting a World War I discovery box and telling the story of Canada’s transformation through an artifact and a soldier. So as you can assume, there were quite a few questions but I was eager to get started in learning about this global outbreak. Just like every other project, there were a couple of competencies to take notice of and these two competencies would continue to make an appearance throughout the whole project.

Establish Historical Significance: How do we make choices about what is worth remembering?

Global Collaborator: How might I use technology to connect to the world?

Since significance would be the most important word in this project we had to engrave it in our minds, so to kick us off we looked at an artifact that represents being Canadian and why it’s significant. When I hear the word Canada I automatically go to the maple leaf so I already had the first part, it was just a matter of finding information and telling a compelling story. After a bit of research, I managed to create a video that I would say is quite good considering the amount of time given. This task helped set me up for what was to come and got me thinking more about how I could show the significance of World War I.

At this point in the project, we knew we were making a video about an artifact so it was time to figure out what artifact it will be. All we had were photos of about 20 artifacts and we had a little gallery looking at each and every one, the variety of artifacts ranged from a gas mask to bullet casings to attestation papers but it wasn’t any of those that caught my eye, it was a map. At first, it doesn’t sound very interesting but after I did some research the story behind it was truly fascinating. However, researching this map of Ypres was difficult because there wasn’t really much information on this exact map, it was more about maps in general so I had to keep a growth mindset and keep on thinking about how I can talk about the significance of this specific map. What I ended up with was the map itself wasn’t too significant but it was the story behind it. This map was of Ypres and that was the first major battle that the Canadians had so it was a turning point for them.

Now it was time for the hard part, finding a soldier and connecting them to the artifact. As you can imagine it would be quite the task to find the exact person who used this map so I had to think a bit more creatively. This was tough for me because I’m not the most creative person out there so it took me a while to find the best way I could link the two. After hours of researching soldiers who fought in the battle of Ypres and seeing if they were on the Canadian archives, I came across a man named Edwin Alderson. This man was a Lieutenant-General and may well have used this map. I was pretty pleased with myself for finding this soldier and I felt like I used the global collaborator competency to the best of my abilities. I found a variety of reliable sources that helped guide me in creating my final video. Now that I had all my research done it was just up to me in how I want to tell the story.

After I had my whole story written out in the screenplay format I had to find every single photo and video that I wanted to incorporate in my own video. To my surprise this was one of the hardest parts of the whole project, since my soldier died in 1927 there aren’t too many photos of him on the internet, it took quite some time to find images of him and due to there only being a couple of high-quality images of him I had to result to using some of his documents. Although this storyboard was tedious it really helped me envision my video and brought it to life. I could finally see what my end product will look like and I felt pretty good about it. Once again I used the global collaborator competency in finding around 50 photos to help tell my story as well as a few videos.

I finally had everything all together and it was just a matter of piecing it all together like how I imagined. After some peer critique, I knew what changes I needed to make in order to make my video as good as it could be so I set to work making minor adjustments and after a solid work period my video was finished and I was nothing but relieved it came together. I had a finished video ready to go and all that I was waiting for was the exhibition. Practicing my pitch multiple times and fixing it accordingly was the final touch in making this project come to life. As the days passed it only meant one thing, the exhibition is closer and the day prior I was on the edge of my seat waiting for the final destination.

The Exhibition

The day came and it was much different than I had imagined, there were fewer people and if I’m being honest, it felt very awkward. I think I practiced my pitch too much and I ended up just speaking and not actually having a conversation. Luckily for me, there were two days so I could make sure it was better for the next. Having Ryder next to me really helped me and if I needed to ask him about my pitch I knew he would be as honest as he could. After running through what I would say with him I finally managed to make a conversation out of it instead of speaking with no emotion. The second day went much better and I feel like the audience would say the same. A key thing that I learnt during this experience was that I needed to be confident no matter what, some people asked me questions that I didn’t really know the answer to but if I spoke with confidence and told them what I think they probably wouldn’t doubt me.

Coming into this project I had little to no knowledge of World War I but coming out I’m a different person. Before I just thought of the war as horrible and don’t get me wrong it definitely was, but once you look deeper into it, it’s actually a very interesting event. I didn’t realize that this war was so important to Canada and without it, I might not be where I am today. After weeks of research and looking at the driving question of “how might we use artifacts and film to show the significance of WWI?” I can now give an answer, we can use artifacts and film to help tell the deeper meaning and understand the significance of past events. Many of the artifacts in the box symbolize more than what they look, especially the map, so these artifacts can help us understand the war through the story that they hold. The past few weeks have been eventful, to say the least, but this was one of my favourite projects we’ve done in a while. Although it was frustrating at times I kept a growth mindset and managed to push through and create some solid work.

“Nobody wins in a war, they lost but we didn’t win” – Donald Arthur Hodge