Have you heard of the man who fought for the Metis? Do you even know what a Metis is? If you answered yes to either of those questions, you should still read this post. 

“Metis” is a french word meaning mixed, and if you are/were a Metis, that means you have both european and First Nations blood. The most well known Metis settlement was the Red River, which became Winnipeg. 

A man named Louis Riel was born in the settlement in 1844. He became a controversial politician, as he thought the rights of the Metis people weren’t being respected. A lot of Metis supported him, but the Canadians (he started fighting after confederation) thought of him as a megalomaniac and a murderer leading a group of savages. 

But how did he get so controversial? We read a comic strip biography about his life. The author had to leave out some details, but he kept all the important events. In the book the first major event was when Riel accused a man of being a spy. The man was able to escape, before being caught a brutally killed by Thomas Scott. Thomas was arrested, and held in fort Garry. If anyone was insane, it’d be Thomas. Staying up all night screaming insults and swears at the Metis and First Nations guards. It was so bad his cell mates asked for him to be moved to a different cell. 

After a while, the guards asked Riel if they could execute Thomas. Riel was reluctant at first, but he eventually agreed to Thomas’ execution. Through local newspaper the event eventually got to Canada, and a new newspaper was printed. Because the news can and will bias towards their side, important details were “forgotten” and Riel was deemed a villain. 

Through a large snowball of events, Canadian soldiers decided to invade the area. Riel and his men defended, but were still called the villains because the “killed hundreds of brave Canadian soldiers” even though the Canadians invaded their land and the Metis were defending it.

Riel saw that too many people were dying to either protect him or kill him, so he turned himself in.

Even then, people were still trying to defend him. After 13 days of trial, the judge decided he was guilty of high treason. He was transported to Saskatchewan to be hanged so the Metis couldn’t defend him as easily. 

But was he the villain? Well, I don’t think so. Sure, he did order the execution of Thomas Scott. But Thomas wasn’t innocent. He killed a man, and committed treason, so execution seemed like a reasonable punishment (not by todays standards though). The media portrayed Thomas as an innocent man, but he got the justice he deserved. The Canadian government wanted an excuse to take control over the settlement. 

Despite all Riel went through, he used his power to make his voice heard, and he still has an impact on Winnipeg today. Just like Richard Clement Moody, the man I made an animation about for my last project. We were tasked with making a short animation about a person or group of people who used their power to influence Canada in some way. This person had to be before WWI, and west of Ontario. 

I wanted to do the person who created Vancouver, and I thought that Captain George Vancouver was that man. Vancouver island was settled before Vancouver, and the island is named after him. But after doing some research, I found that Richard Clement Moody first settled in the Vancouver area. 

First off, why Moody? Well, Moody was promoted to a Major-General of a group of Royal Engineers, the British Columbia Detachment, to be exact. Their goal was to create a settlement on the border of the US to claim the Fraser Gold Fields for Canada. 

The group planned to go to Victoria, then travel to the mainland. Along the way, the Royal Engineers, British Columbia Detachment picked up people who wanted to travel with them. The REBCD brought them along to Victoria, until Moody arrived with his family. They traveled to the mainland, and created a settlement along the Fraser River. Moody named this settlement New Westminster. 

Because the gold rush doesn’t happen for the next couple years, New Westminster was small, and not much happened for the first year. That is, until the merchants went to Moody asking for a trail from New Westminster to Burrard inlet. This would allow for easier trade between New Westminster and other cities. Moody had a very military-centric mind, so he saw the trail as a boost to military and navy, so he built it. He named it Kingsway, and it still exists today.

New Westminster was still small, even after the gold rush. Until the CPR was planned to end in New Westminster. Many new workers came in beginning the long, treacherous build of a railway from New Westminster eastern, through the Rocky Mountains. New Westminster gained a huge boost of population, and workers moved there with their families. They were all exited to finish the largest transcontinental railway at the time.

In the video, I mainly used an app called FlipaClip, a fun animation app. For transitions and characters moving across the screen, I used magic moves in Keynote. At the beginning, I had my friends Jamie Ball and Kiefer Hogg to help with the live action part. In it, Jamie asks me who created vancouver. I begin to tell him, and the animation begins. 

I learned a lot about animation during this project. I learned that hand drawing is really slow, and I wasn’t even drawing with much detail. Magic moves is a lot faster, but doesn’t look as good in my opinion. If I ever need to animate something again, I’ll have to see how long I have, an the quality I want the video to be.