You only have a few thousand dollars left. Will you pay combat the spread of a deadly virus, or will you continue expanding the capital. All sorts of problems have risen. You a are at risk of losing the nation that you have worked so hard to build.

As part of a recent humanities project, I created a board game which allows you to step into the shoes of the 1870s Canadian Government as you are tasked with building Canada as a nation, while managing any problems that arise. This project was called Building a Nation. The driving question was “What did nationalism mean for people around Canada.”

A nation is a group of people who identify with each other based on many different aspects. Nationalism is the feeling of belonging to a nation. We explored this idea of nationalism while researching the early days of Canada.

To start this project, we learned about nationalism. We then completed a simulation of Canadian Confederation. Each group was assigned a colony and was tasked with presenting a list of demands and deciding weather or not they would like to join confederation. My group was assigned Canada West, and we decided to join confederation. To learn more about our decision, click here.

We then met with a partner and planned for our board game we would create about the topics we had been discussing. I was partnered with my friend Makai. We planned our game, and then got to work. Our game was going to be a game played mostly with cards. It was called Creating Canada We created our rules, and then our cards. After everything was complete, our game was ready to be played. Here are some photos of our game:

I am really happy with the game that we created, and I had a great time making it. If you read my MPOL this year, you would know that my goal for the rest of this year is to enjoy my learning. This means that I am trying to have fun while learning and working on projects. I can confidently say that I enjoyed all parts of this project.

Nationalism is important. Weather its a religion, a country, a language or something else, it is important that the people feel like they are part of a nation. Without nationalism, Canada would be half the country it is today.