To open this year’s humanities portion, we studied Canadian identity and hosted a human library. As I’d not heard of the concept of a human library before, I was interested in what it would entail and what we would need to do.

But what is a human library?

The Human Library project was started in Denmark in 2000 as a way to help people overcome stereotypes and preconceptions about others through face to face communication.

We started by discussing what Canadian identity was and why it is important to us, I think that this was good for helping us figure out what we were talking about. I think that Canadian identity matters due to it helping us stay unified in diversity and helps us stay independent from the U.S.A.

Next, we discussed the charter of rights and freedoms, which secures several fundamental rights for Canadians, such as the right to leave the country, and the right to a fair trial.

I think that legal rights are the most important, as most totalitarian countries lack them.

Finally, for the third part of building knowledge, we had to make brief presentations on a topic relating to Canadian identity, and for mine, I chose to talk about nato and how it lets Canada for us more on funding its civic sector instead of focusing on the military. For this, we made need to know questions like “How has canadian foreign policy changed over time”. I thought that this was a fun activity where I could talk about a topic I enjoy.

After that, it was simply the Human Library to cap everything off, and I’ll start with what went well. Everyone seemed interested in what everyone else had to say, and walking around, it looked like everyone was engaged in conversations. I’m sure if it hadn’t been for traffic we would’ve had a much larger crowd, which would’ve led to more diverse questions being asked.

The main issue I had with this event was the lack of communication beforehand. Not until the day of the event did the “Books” know when to arrive, and even then, the explanation of what it was was confusing (at least to my book). I think that next year will be better due to the lessons learned, and hopefully we can continue to unjudge people.