Canada before WW1
This unit of Humanties we learnt about multiple things in the time frame of before WWI. This includes Louis Riel, The gold rush, building the CPR, Treaties, The Metis, Hudson Bay Compmany, North West Company, and so many more places, individuals, and groups of people. Alot of the topics were things my class and I learnt on our trip to CALGARY . I’m going to break down the unit into sections as there was so much going on.
THE DRIVING QUESTION
Just like every humanties project, we had a driving question. This units was…. How do disparities in power alter relationships? This had to be answered in our project which I will talk about late.
LOUIS RIEL COMIC BOOK
To get to know the Metis man Louis Riel, we read Louis Riel: A Comic Strip Autobiography By Chester Brown. Its about the Canadian Government mistreating the Metis who lived on the Red River Valley in Manitoba, and how Louis Riel tried to protect them.
Throughout the 4 parts of the book, we had to write summaries for each part. This was good because it really made you understand every part of the book. Here is one of my summaries from this book.
Our driving question while reading this book is: Is Louis Riel a Villan or Hero? My answer to that after reading the whole book is I think he’s a hero. He stood up for the Metis when no one else was. The Metis were being treated less than human by the Canadian Government. Someone had to do something, and the person who did was Louis Riel.
I loved this book a lot. The fact it was a comic the whole way through made the story interesting, and never boring. I would recommend this to anyone learning about the Metis!
THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY
In September my class and I went to Calgary. On that trip we focused on the topic of the CPR. Now that its the end of the year, we revisited the topic. A lot of the things we talked about were through reading, and discussing in the class. Most of it were things we had learnt in Calgary. Questions like how it was built, who built it, why it was built, and when it was built.
A topic we touched on a lot this unit was the Chinese Immigrants that helped build the CPR. This topic is a very brutal and hard to learn about as these men came to Canada promised money and a new life and were given nothing for all there hard work. Some men couldn’t make there way back to there families in China and some didn’t even survive. So many Chinese Immigrants worked hard everyday to build the CPR and then were lied to and forgotten by the Canadian government.
THE CARIBOU GOLD RUSH
We touched on the topic of the gold rush in BC a bit at the end of this unit. We didnt do many activities on this but we did discuss a lot in the class. These discussions were about how the gold rush brought a booming economy to BC because everyone was following there dream of finding gold and becoming rich. Anyways, during the gold rush things like the Caribou Road were built. This road was built from Fort Yale to Barkerville in BC through extremely hazardous canyon territory in the Interior of B.C. After the gold rush, many of the thousands of people left BC there was no gold left, and the economy went downhill. One of the reasons BC joined Canada was because there economy was lacking, and they were in dept because of things like building the Caribou Road.
THE BIG PROJECT!
Our assigned project this unit was to make an Animation about Anyone, any group, or any place before WWI. It also had to answer the driving question “How do disparities in power alter relationships?” I decided on the a man named Lord Selkirk. He was involved with Hudson Bay C0mpany, North West Company, and the Metis, and wanted to settle Scottish farmers on the Metis land.
RESEARCH + TURNING IT IN TO A STORY
To get to know the person I’m doing my project on, I need to research! I used multiple websites to get as much info on him as I could. The next step attached to this was turning it into a story. While researching, I wrote down the information in a the way I would tell a story. So, I did both of these steps in one time! Woohoo! Time saving!!
STORYBOARDING!
I learnt from the frankinstuffy video to not make a very detailed storyboard, as that is a waste of time. So for this one I made a simple to the point board im very happy with.
ANIMATING
Next step is to actually make the video! I decided to use the app FlipaClip to make a hand drawn animation. I knew I was getting myself into a long and patience testing project the second I started and learnt it takes about 10 minutes to get 5 seconds done!!
After a long 3 weeks, I ended up with this final product.
I’m extremely proud of myself for being so driven through out this whole project, as animations take a lot of persistence and patience. I feel I definitely answered the driving question in my video, and told the story of Lord Selkirk and his power.
CONCLUSION
This unit was definitely a very interesting one. I learnt lots of new things about Canada before WWI, and learnt how to animate. I loved toucining on topics we learnt about on the Calgary trip like the CPR! Overall, this unit was very fun and I am proud of my journey to the final product, and the final product.
