Canada was involved in World War II (WWII) in many ways but the most notable way that they contributed was with the capture of Juno Beach. Juno Beach is a beach on the coast of France and it was one of the points that the Allies wanted to capture. It was a way for Canada to prove themselves and gain more respect as a country. It was one of a big contributors to the development of Canadien identity and independence. 

Our recent Humanities project was a very big WWII focused projects. This was one of the biggest projects we’ve done so far, there was so much learning to do with history, essay formatting and so much more. Ms Madsen had a great time spending multiple classes teaching us about the history of WWII and the ways that Canada was involved. I was actually quite surprised how much Canada was involved in the war. I really enjoy learning about wars so I was pretty quickly hooked on this project. We were told that the final product of this project will be an zine that will be sent to the Juno Beach Museum in France and the Lynn Valley Legion. We also had to complete a service to our community to understand the notion of a service.

 For my service project me and my friend Ailie worked together. Our original idea was to donate to one of our local homeless shelters. We were both really excited for this opportunity as it was something that we really thought could actually make a difference. We emailed two shelters but unfortunately they never got back to us. So last minute me and Ailie had to change our plans. We instead decided to do a forest clean up since we go on walks in the forest behind my house and we both noticed that there was a lot of trash. Unfortunately the only time our schedules lined up was when it was dark so we ended up doing it at night. Here’s a photo of me and some of the trash we collected. 

Another thing that was introduced this project was smart brevity. Smart brevity is a form of note taking but making it as brief and simple to read as possible. The way that we connected this to our project was by making a bunch of examples based on topics that we were assigned that connected to WWII. I’m actually quite proud of mine since I think I made it very PLPafied.

History doesn’t always have to be repeated

Once we were assigned our essays I decided to link my essay to my smart brevity topic because I had already done some research about it. Here’s my thesis statement: “The widespread recognition of the horrors of the Holocaust and the staggering loss of life pushed a global shift towards anti-war sentiment and the desire to learning from past mistakes to build a more peaceful world.” I learned a huge amount from this essay, both about my topic and also MLA formatting. Before I had started writing this I knew close to nothing about Canada’s involvement in the Holocaust. Canada like many other countries at the time was largely anti semitic but the extent of it in some ways went over what I would have thought. Before WWII there were anti semitic riots the most notable being the Christie Pits riots. I was genuinely surprised that Canada had this violent history. 

Our big struggle for this essay was MLA formatting. I have never written in MLA formatting so this was quite the learning experience. It turns out there are all kinds of little rules to it. It took me awhile but by the end my essay actually looked very professional and formal. 

Final draft

For our final project we had to create a Zine. You may be wondering: “what in the world is a Zine?” Well Zine (pronounced zeene according to Ms Mic) is writing formatted in a magazine style. Each person in our class had to create a Zine and then we put them all together to create a class Zine. As I said in the beginning this class Zine will be sent to the famous Juno Beach and will also be donated to the Lynn Valley legion. So basically it was a big deal.

I’m actually very happy on how I managed this project since the past couple projects I was struggling with keeping on top of things but this time I was able to turn everything in on time and not fall behind. One of the core competencies I was focusing on this year was agency and through this project I think I was able to demonstrate that.

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