Since I was born, I have lived in Canada. Canada has been the only home I’ve ever known, and because of that, I absolutely love it here. This beautiful country draws in families and individuals from all over the world for a vast amount of reasons.
Our class of PLP has been assigned to create a video submission for the Here’s My Canada contest. The video submissions must reflect on Canada’s culture, history, or identity, and must be no longer than 30 seconds. The individuals hosting this contest stopped by our school, Seycove, early in march to explain the focus of this contest, and interview each of us about what Canada means to us. This put me on the spot, as I quickly had to asses this question. What does Canada mean to me? Why do I think of Canada as my home? These were all important questions that I had never asked myself. It wasn’t until minutes before it was my turn to be interviewed that I realized what Canada meant to me.
It was 1994 and my parents had both decided to travel the world together. They had both lived their entire life in South Africa, and had only traveled a bit of Europe and Asia after university. Leaving South Africa with one suitcase each, the first stop on their journey was Canada. Once they had arrived, they were completely and utterly amazed by the kind heartedness and values of all Canadian citizens. The welcoming nature and diversity allowed my parents to feel comfortable and safe. To them, it had also felt as if they had found a new home. They decided to call of their journey to travel the world, and decided to buy a house and live on Canada. In six years time, my parents would have their first kid, who happened to be me! It really means a lot to me to know that Canada could have such a strong personal affect on my parents, and the fact that they decided to live here despite the fact that the entire rest of our family still resides in South Africa. Taking such a risk to start a life in a new country would not be easy if Canadians were not as loving and caring as they are.
It was time for me to create a video now to represent my thoughts on Canada. Whilst trying to decide which style of video I wanted to do, I came up with the idea to draw m entire video. Every scene and character in my video was drawn by me on my iPad. I feel that this makes the video feel much more personal and authentic than using somebody else’s footage with my voiceover. It took me quite some time to draw everything since I was forced to use my finger to draw. Below is my video, I hope you enjoy.