💥 The Story of Francis “Peggy” Pegahmagabow | WWI

In this project we created graphic novels about an aspect of WWI. I choose to learn and create a graphic novel about Francis “Peggy” Pegahmagabow, the most deadly sniper and highest decorated Indigenous Person from Canada in WWI. Here’s my graphic novel (pease select a file type below):

Please choose a file type to open this graphic novel in:

 

How might we use graphic novels to understand Canada’s involvement in WWI?

Graphic novels are a great way to learn about WWI as they combine text with images to tell an intriguing and comprehensive story. Making graphic novels is also a great way to learn about WWI as it requires you to understand your topic well enough that you can create a story and accompanying illustrations, and through creating these, the history will become ingrained in your mind.

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One of the first assignments we received was to write an opinion paragraph arguing what you personally thought was the most significant causes of WWI. We build knowledge on the subject by reading textbook pages and watching this very informative Crash Course video [link to video]. I think that I really improved my abilities on the curricular competency “Analyze Cause and Consequence: Analyze why events happen, and what are their impacts?“ In my opinion the main cause of WWI was alliances. Click below to read my paragraph supported with evidence on why:

To build knowledge about WWI we read a Graphic Novel titled “World War One 1914-1918” by Alan Cowsill and Lalit Kumamoto Sharma. I really enjoyed this graphic novel and I learned a lot from it. The After we finished reading the graphic novel we wrote a reflection on it specifically discussing the short and long term consequences of WWI. Click below to read my reflection:

To further our understanding of WWI, we got to watch the movie 1917. It was an incredible movie. I loved the amazing cinematography: it seemed as though the whole movie was filmed in a single cut. The story itself was somewhat sad, but accurate to the conditions of WWI. It also gave me a better idea of what the trenches and No Man’s Land looked like. Highly recommend watching it!

We then chose our specific topics within WWI to make our graphic novels about. I chose the topic of Indigenous People in Canada’s contributions to WWI. Once I chose the topic I began planning out my story and 5W’s (Who, What, Where, When, How). I decided to make my story about an Anishinaabe First Nations from the Wasauksing (Parry Island) Band named Francis “Peggy” Pegahmagabow. If you would like, you may read my planning documents here ⬈

I also created a storyboard as part of the planning process:

 

I then began the process of making the text and layout in Comic Life 3. I used screenshots of my storyboard as placeholder images for my first draft: 

I then used Procreate to use a combo of tracing and drawing to create all of my illustrations for the graphic novel. This was a great way for me to extend on the curricular competency “Create Effectively: Effectively incorporating technical and narrative writing within a comic panel.” I actually had a lot of fun with this and I am extremely proud of my completed graphic novel which if you didn’t read at the top of the page you need to read now:

 

Please choose a file type to open this graphic novel in:

 

To finish off this project we watched this short Canada: The Story Of Us episode about almost all of the aspects of Canadian contribution to WWI. It’s very well made and very interesting, I highly recommend that you take the time to watch it:

If you want to learn more about Francis “Peggy” Pegahmagabow specifically, you can watch this shorter video from the Canada: Story Of Us video:

When I first heard we were learning about WWI, I didn’t think I was going to find this project very exciting or interesting, but I was very much mistaken. I absolutely loved this project, it was interesting and engaging throughout and I really enjoyed making graphic novels as a final product. I also really loved getting to learn about Francis “Peggy” Pegahmagabow and his contributions to WWI and his efforts to have better rights for Indigenous People in Canada.

Let me know your thoughts on my graphic novel in the comments below!
Over and out!