Final Reflection

I totally forgot about this one!  All month long I've been thinking about posting something cheeky as a one page reflection: a picture me holding a mirror in front of another mirror so it looks like there are a million different mes all reflected back at one another, or maybe a picture of me holding a mirror in front of my computer screen so that I'm literally reflecting the image of my ISU at the screen.  Alas, I'm still posting things at the last minute, so this pictorial experiment will likely never come to fruition.  The reflection piece?  You're looking at it.

The ISU itself was a hilariously fun exercise for me.  I love being able to pick my own projects, and the ability to compose what is effectively Doctor Who fanfiction for a mark was just about the best thing to happen to me all Teacher's College.  To be honest, my experience at the Faculty of Education has been a mixed one, but this class has always managed to pique my enthusiasm and creativity.  Learning through experience and experimentation has inspired me to be a more creative presence in the classroom, and I think out of all the course I've taken, this history class has been the most rewarding. 

So thank you, Dr. Epp, and thank you, class of Instruction and Curriculum in History, for giving me the opportunity to really be inspired by anything that comes my way, for placing me in a classroom before practicum, and showing me that anywhere I go and anything I do has relevance, historically and educationally speaking.

(Also, if I may reiterate: Doctor Who fiction!  For a grade!  THANK YOU!)

Cox Sure!: The Charlie Cox Musical

Prologue: Charlie Cox's death hits the newspapers.  Chorus sings and dances to a slow, somber version of, "No Other Mayor's As Talked About As Me" which reflect Charlie's sordid, intense life. The narrator appears - a young woman in 50s attire, begins the story at the close of the opening number. 

Act 1: Charlie's birth, youth, and work in Alberta culminating in his move to Port Arthur, Ontario.  The musical number is ten minutes long, has four movements, and is titled, "Port Arthur Bound!"  The main vocals are provided by the musical's narrator and Charlie in his various incarnations.  Supporting vocals are provided by Charlie's mother, father, siblings, and fellow employees. 

Act 2:  Charlie earns notoriety for his sports abilities and tap dancing.  Act begins with Charlie on stage singing and tapping to, "No Other Man's As Talked About As Me!" (a slightly altered rendition of his bigger number, "No Other Mayor's As Talked About As Me!").  The Act ends with Cox borrowing money to buy horses and work with timber in the song, "Getting Off the Stage."

Act 3:  Charlie now owns a timber business and has married Johanna Bengston. During this act, Charlie and Johanna get into a fierce argument about his work, and together they sing the duet, "This'll Be the End of Us."  After they reconcile, Charlie receives word that he has been elected mayor of Port Arthur.  When he takes to the streets as mayor, his wife and neighbours join him in a thrilling rendition of, "No Other Mayor's as Talked About As Me!"

Act 4: Cox is in his office, leaning down with the phone at his ear.  .  Eileen Flanagan, a young schoolteacher, appears in the doorway looking very distraught.  There are tears in her eyes. (Song: The Man With Two Faces).

Eileen: Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor,
I don't want to interfere,
But Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor,
You've taken my fair share.

It isn't that I want to tell the board just how to act,
Or that I feel that my politics are better than that.

But Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor,
I'm a woman, don't you care?
Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor,
How could you even...dare?

Charlie: (to the person on the phone) Just a minute.  (He puts his hand over the receiver.)  I'm sorry, I don't know you, but you'll have to come back some other time.

Eileen: I don't have another moment...

Charlie:  Well, you just can't take up mine. 
Please go out the way you came,
Shut the door, leave you name,
And I'll get back to you.

Eileen:  Oh, no, you won't.

Charlie:  Who are you?

Eileen (spoken): I'm a school teacher.

Charlie: (to the person on the line) I'll call you back.  (He hangs up.)  Oh, I see...
Ms. Teacher, Ms. Teacher,
Your salary has gotten meeker,
And you're eager to confront the man you think made it so meager.

But Ms. Teacher, Ms. Teacher,
Hate to make the outcome bleaker,
But you can't just seek your salary from one man alone!

It was the council and the board!
That saw fit to cause discord.
You'll need to pass a motion,
File a form, and wait your turn!

Eileen:  But this is my livelihood!

Charlie: And this, Ms. Teacher, is mine!

Eileen: Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor!
You can't do this!  It's not fair!
I do every bit as much work as you.

Charlie:  And like me, you have to follow bureaucratic procedure.
(Spoken) The forms are on your way out, Ms. Teacher.

(He walks back to his desk and picks up the phone again.  Eileen stands in the door, trying her best not to cry.)

Eileen: (Mournful)  You're so...charming.

Charlie (drops the phone):  What was that?

Eileen:  You're so charming!  You're so sweet!
You've got all the world at your feet.
But of course, we're all the fools:
'Cuz you're a liar and a crook who takes money from our schools!

Charlie:  GET OUT OF HERE BEFORE I CALL THE POLICE!

(Eileen storms out of the office.  She can be heard singing off-stage, ruffling through items in her purse.)

Eileen:  There's two sides to you, Mr. Mayor - the one we see and the one you hide,
And I wonder if even your wife knows the monster that's inside you.
If there's one thing that will give me some closure from this occasion,
It's making that monster known that will bring me some gratification!

(Eileen marches back into the office.  There is a jar in her hand.  She throws the contents of the jar - a clear liquid - into Charlie's face.  He recoils and screams in pain.)

Eileen:  You're a man with two faces!
You've got one side that the world can see,
And that's the side you pretend to be.

But now you'll always wear that other half,
Now that's the side that the world will see.
You're a man with two faces, Mr. Mayor,
And I just set the monster face free.

(Eileen leaves Charlie wallowing in pain on stage.  The lights dim.)

Act Six: The narrator informs everyone that Charlie's disfigurement didn't hurt his popularity, but that he actually went on to several political successes. Charlie is the liberal candidate in this act.  He is debating with his opponent, Howe, with the song, "You're Nothing but an Understatement."  Cox finally recognizes that he can't win and he withdraws his nomination. 

Act Seven:  The narrator provides some information about Cox's decline in popularity and health in the coming years.  She also notes that his wife died in 1958.  The final act shows the narrator walking down the street.  She is humming the melody of, "No Other Mayor's as Talked About as Me!"  Charlie can be seen walking down the steps of a building to the basement.  He can be heard banging on a furnace, and then suddenly the banging stops.  The narrator stops by the street corner and sings a final reprise of Charlie's song.

Curtains fall. 

Coyote Columbus

I love Coyote.  There is no other figure in literary history I can appreciate more than one who enters a space just to rain all kinds of chaos down upon it.  The beauty, I think, lies in the complexity of the character's influence.  Tricksters are never evil or malicious, though they may occasionally target the high and the mighty in and attempt to provide a lesson in himility.  Their actions are always simply chaos in its purest form, never good or bad, simply cause and consequence. 

I've always wanted to teach the Trickster figure to a classroom.  I don't know if I want it to be part of a unit, a unit itself, or the subject of an entire class.  I think in any case, the trickster would be an engaging subject for students.  There are tricksters from nearly every culture: Coyote differs depending on which tribe or band is providing the story; Britain had fools and jesters to provide a chaotic element to the storytelling; in Japan, the fox or kitsune champions the lowly and challenges the powerful.  For all our love of order, I have to believe that humans attain just as much pleasure from seeing their systems, structures, and institutions torn asunder. 

I would use King's Coyote Columbus in my classroom in a heartbeat.  It provides such an excellent counterpoint to everything European creation stories teaches, and its main character, just as in King's Green Grass, Running Water, is a trickster.  It's important for students to hear about these alternate narratives to give them perspective on authorship and history.  So often we're told that history is written by the winners, but how often do we adopt that perspective when we learn history?  This story is a disruption of epic proportions, and it's going into my teaching library.

Response: John Ralston Saul

No offense to John Ralston Saul, but I have to disagree with his assessment that Canada has been the longest uninterrupted democracy in the world.  It's not just because I'm a jaded youth either.  The statement is just a mess of signification, because in order to make it, one must first assume that Canada's democracy has never wavered at any time, and second, one must believe that democracy truly exists.  Again, it's not because I'm a jaded youth that I believe that.  It's because I know my Canadian history to even a marginal degree that I know how to complicate both of these very attractive assumptions: Canadian democracy was born in decidedly un-democratic company, we still consider the Queen to be our head-of-state, and democracy itself is, in practice, un-democratic.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines democracy as "a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state , typically through elected representatives".  I love this definition because it is simultaneously ideological and oppressive in the same explicit instant.  Democracy is, by definition, not reflective of the whole of society but through the process of election and so-called eligible representatives.  For the sake of simplicity in this response, I'm not going to focus on pre-Confederation Canada, because it was not technically a democracy but a monarchy.  In fact, the argument could even be made that Canada is still a monarchy, because the Queen is still regarded as our head of state.  


Ralston Saul's definition of democracy differs somewhat from the OED.  He sees democracy as a system of government by the people, for the people, of the people, and the people, for him, are a great mix of ethnicities and cultures.  We are Metis, he writes, individuals of both European and Aboriginal descent.  The foundation of our country's government lies in the colonists, not the colonials, and currently, our government is varied and representation of all the people.  I can appreciate Saul's re-reading of history to include a more sympathetic view of our origins, and I also appreciate his ability to redefine power structures in society, recasting Canada as the centre of our national ideology rather than Britain.  However, I can't imagine how he thinks that Canada is a democracy, let alone an uninterrupted one. 


Canada's origins as a democracy begin, as I've stated, at Confederation (unless you believe that Confederation maintained Canada's monarchical links, in which case, stop reading here).  Yet Confederation itself was not a democracy by Saul's definition.  Everyone in the rooms of both the Charlottetown and Quebec conferences were white, upper class men of European descent or nationality.  They aren't elected officials as demanded by the OED.  They weren't even necessarily the most eligible, what with two major groups in the population - women and Aboriginals - completely left out of the proceedings.  Democracy in Canada was therefore born out of an event that was decidedly un-democratic.  


A democracy born in exclusion cannot possibly be a democracy, but let's pretend for a moment that Confederation actually did represent the birth of a democratic government in Canada.  That government spent the next century-and-three-quarters continuously oppressing the people it excluded from Confederation in the beginning.  They even started oppressing other minorities when immigrants began arriving in Canada.  Even today, the government is not representational of all the people in Canada.  


So if Ralston Saul would like to make the assertion that Canada is the longest uninterrupted non-democracy, I would like to agree; I think a lot of countries fall under that category.  But for all its fairness, for all the reasons I am proud to be a Canadian, democracy is such a loaded term that I don't think adequately describes our current political climate. 

Response: Ken Osborne's "Canadian History in Schools"

Ken Osborne, like Penney Clark, makes the assumption that there is a distinct Canadian national identity.  Unlike Clark, he sees this national identity as more varied and complicated than the current curriculum or other historians have postulated before.  I think that's a helpful stance to take on the subject of history, especially when you're arguing for a reevaluation of history in the classroom. 

Again though, there are problems with some of the improvements Osborne suggests be applied to the classroom.  Several of his new teaching methods are antiquated and archaic.  They also would be ineffective for instructing students of the digital age.  Memorization and purely knowledge based examinations need to be reassessed before they are integrated back into the new classroom.  Perhaps the reason why history is such a bore and an effort for teachers and students alike is because we keep referring back to an old system of instruction, one that we cling to idealistically because for whatever reason, we think it's an accurate measure of success.  Osborne wants what Sir Ken Robinson calls reformation, not revolution.  The history curriculum requires the latter. 

Response: Penney Clark's "Historical Context of Social Studies in English Canada"

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Penney Clark begins her article "Historical Context of Social Studies in English Canada" by stating that much of social studies in English Canada borrows, models itself after, or is subject to American models and influences.  She refers to this as receiving "scraps from under the American table", as if those who accept the current system and policies surrounding social sciences have subjugated themselves to an oppressive system.  American influence is a threat to Canadian social studies according to Clark, at least in policy.  Individual classrooms all provide radically different models for the social studies curriculum; hence, Clark chooses to focus only on the policies, textbook, and ministry document. 

I believe that Clark's analysis is an unhelpful one for two reasons.  First, Clark's critical and scathing depiction of American influences seem like pithy attempts to rage against the hegemonic powers-that-be rather than a critical examination of Canadian-American relations.  She notes that Canadian and American cultures have cross-polinated, that they bear elements of each other, no matter how slight, but she writes her article on the premise that Canada should be completely distinct and independent of American culture.  In her fervour, Clark forsakes this cross-polination and sharing of identity, as well as the ways that Canadian schools reject American systems and institutions. In this sense, I find her analysis quite narrow and shallow.

Clark's superficiality accounts for my second point as well.  Though she acknowledges that the classroom is a dynamic and independent space, she chooses instead to focus on Canadian education policies, which, while telling of American influences, are not indicative of Canada's complete embrace of American practices.  In fact, the classroom is, I would argue, a much more interesting focus of study in this regard.  Clark may safely assert that American policies and practices are borrowed heavily from the American education system and she may also harp on the frequent use of American speakers at conferences, but in the classroom, individual teachers may subvert educational practices, adopt different focuses to their research, and utilize different resources.  I would be much more interested to see how different teachers have combated American influences by picking different subject matter and sources for their classes.  I wonder, for instance, about what Clark would say about our class.  We didn't even have a textbook, and the majority of our supplementary resources were Canadian based.

Let's Talk About Sex

Now that I have your attention, let's talk about Lysistrata.

There's already been some excellent analysis done on the Moodle comparing Aristophanes's Lysistrata to The Play by Nellie McClung. I don't know what else I can contribute in that vein. Yes, they're both representative of specific times in history and both examine forms of female power. However, only The Play attempts to examines female power as being human power, free from gender and sexual differences. Lysistrata still constructs male and female power as separate and opposite to one another. 

In terms of women's right, these texts are important to note, but they lack any contemporary critical relevance.  After the publication of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter, both of which owe their existence to Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, it was generally understood that it was impossible to consider the disenfranchisement of women as a unified and consistently oppressive force.  Due to the differences of class, race, age, society, culture, ability, sexuality, and gender performance, every individual's particular circumstance had to be read as independent of everyone else's, subject to a cultural context but not defined by it or representative of a whole. 

Despite Butler's influence, society still tends to construct men and women as opposites, similar to the sexual politics displayed in Lysistrata, though for the sake of political correctness, many people would try to purport McClung's belief that everyone is human rather than gendered.  Even contemporary romantic comedies use the plot of Lysistrata to create humour, with women exerting power over the one domain they have power over - their bodies - in order to take charge of men who have power over everything else.  Feminist criticism still notes the delineation between males and females in textual representation  as well, though interpretations have been complicated by the various branches of criticism that are now available. 

Lysistrata and The Play offer two avenues to female empowerment.  Neither of them are perfect.  There's even an argument to be made about whether or not they're successful.  Like everything else, it seems, both plays have to be judged on a basis of personal fulfillment.  McClung's play worked to secure women a place in forums they were previously not allowed to enter.  Lysistrata and its explicitly, unabashed use of sexual imagery, continues to entertain people through recent productions.  Female power remains a matter of individual circumstance. 

M.Ed. Thesis

Rather than comment on a M.Ed. thesis from the library, I wanted to talk about a point in the discussion about the M.Ed. thesis in the classroom.  I asked whether or not the M.Ed. thesis had any effect on the education system and was given a very vague response, one that seemed to say, no, the M.Ed. thesis, no matter how interesting the results, has little to no effect on the classroom.

Every teacher in every class I have taken this year - and I've taken ten - has urged me, along with my fellow education candidates to change the classroom when we become teachers.  They urge us to be creative and dynamic individuals, to develop new forms of assessment that address our students' individual interests and strengths, and to remake the classroom and the education system through revolution instead of reform.  So far, only one teacher has shown me what differentiated classroom actually looks like; the rest of my teachers have insisted that I keep my head down for the first few years of teaching because I will be powerless to change the system.  I asked them when I should change the system, and then couldn't give me a straight answer. 

It isn't that my teachers are wrong.  The education system is in need of something.  That something is not reform, according to Sir Ken Robinson, who states, "[Reform] [is] not enough.  Reform is no use anymore, because that's simply improving a broken model.  What we need...is not evolution but a revolution.  This [Education] has to be transformed into something else."  Robinson's revolution begins with society; he argues that as a whole, society must accept education's inability to predict success and happiness.  The education system works for some, he argues, but certainly not for all and most assuredly not for the majority.  Second, Robinson claims that we need to start respecting the creativity of our students and fostering that creativity rather than crush it.  He doesn't provide any explanation as to how we can accomplish either of these first stages of the revolution.  Three plausible explanations are as follows: 1) he assumes that his audience knows how both of these mini-revolutions are to be handled, 2) he assumes that each of these mini-revolutions are going to manifest themselves differently for each person, or 3) he has no idea how these mini-revolutions are to take place, but he certainly loves talking about them.

No matter what his response, Sir Ken's Robinson's idea of revolution is indicative of the rather slippery state revolution exists in.  In speech and in theory, revolution is a romantic ideal: men and women toppling heinous dictators and ideologies, moving society from the broken ideas of the past to the new, better ideas of the future.  In reality, revolution requires any number of things: a charismatic leader is a good place to start, one who has ties to the system they wish to change and to society as a whole; support is another, while the final two ingredients to a revolution are being in the right place at the right time.  An awful lot of luck also helps, but it's not integral.  Even with all these facets, real revolution is rarely ever as shiny and as glossy as speeches make it appear.  Revolutions are hard work and great ideas put into action, ideas that are often only great in retrospect. 

The M.Ed. theses in the library are the same as Sir Ken Robinson's speech: they're all great ideas with a lot of revolutionary potential in them, but none of them are ever given the chance to take effect on the education system.  Here is statistical evidence that the system is broken and needs improvement, but no one in the system wants to hear it or use the knowledge.  Educators are great reformers, but we have a long way to go before we're revolutionaries.  The first step would be to start taking advice from M.Ed. students and doctoral candidates and put their knowledge into action. 

Review: History Magazine

When I was sixteen, I went through an obsession with Jack the Ripper, and a friend of mine was good enough to lend me her copy of Patricia Cornwell's Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed.  At the time, it was excellent.  Someone had actually solved the Ripper murders.  Of course, within a year or so I found the harsh criticism Cornwell had received for her publication, and I realized that her explanation wasn't nearly as accurate as her book made it appear.  Cornwell concludes that an artist named Walter Sickert was the Ripper, based on an interview with the artist's son from the early twentieth century. 

Obviously, I picked the History Magazine article entitled "Walter Sickert: Capturing the Darker Side of Life" for this review.  After I found out that Cornwell's novel has been so heavily criticized, I gave up researching Sickert and started reading other fictionalized narratives about the Ripper.  The article promised, based on the magazine's subtitle, that it would provide a view of Sickert from a social perspective rather than a historical one.  Sure enough, the article mentioned his connections to the Ripper case, but the focus was turned on Sickert's life and contributions to the world of art.  It focused on his place in late Victorian society, the critical reactions to his artwork at the time, and his life at home, not the possibility of his being the Ripper killer.

In terms of classroom application, I think this magazine has a lot of potential.  It focuses on untold stories from history, filling in the gaps of cultural knowledge left open by popular opinion and interest.  Best of all, unlike Canadian Military, it requires little context to know exactly what the article is discussion.  History does an excellent job of situating events within popular cultural consciousness and then extrapolating on those ideas.  Personally, I find the tone a little too informal for good, academic criticism, but it's a great starting point for a lot of discussion.  A subscription to this magazine could inspire students to think critically and broadly about historical events, to examine all the different perspectives surrounding singular events. 

Review: Canadian Military

In conjunction with its website, Canadian Military makes for an interesting classroom resource.  When describing my experiences with history in high school, I would often joke with my friends, "Every ten pages in the Canadian history textbook, we had avoided another war.  Every ten pages in the American history textbook, they had just fought in another war, sometimes with themselves."  Even for the daughter of a Canadian military history buff, a man who served on reserve for three years, my idea of the Canadian national identity never included a military, and when it did, it was always had a negative implication.  Canadian Military, as a magazine, is a reminder that the Canadian military wasn't just a collection of blunders by Sam Hughes. 

The only difficult part of integrating Canadian Military into the classroom is that it requires a fair bit of context to make it readable.  I picked the article "On Target September 7", which describes an election and chain of command that I'm completely unfamiliar with.  I think I understand what's happening, but I can't be sure without a lot of context to fill in the gaps of my knowledge.  On the one hand, this website could force teachers to work harder at developing a more well-rounded history curriculum, one that takes into consideration all of the Canadian military's hard work from throughout history, the politics that take place in the forces, and their continuing significance in society today.  Unfortunately, teachers already have so much work to do to prepare for their lessons that it's doubtful they'll have the time or energy to develop a decent historical analysis using all that Canadian Military has to offer.

Another complaint about the magazine is that so much of it is written in a conversational tone that it's difficult to tell what facts have been embellished or are clearly hearsay.  In the article I read, there was such an air of incredulity that I fear what I was reading was pure fiction.  It was like a Tom Clancy novel online.  I think that the magazine does have some advantages for teachers, but not enough to warrant full integration into the classroom.  

Review: Maclean's, Hello, Harper's

May I just please take a moment, without fear of mockery, admit my deep love of all things British, especially the fantastical narratives surrounding the royal weddings?  Yes, I understand that these narratives are ridiculous and, especially in Diana Spencer's case, brutal, because they hide the truth of the human condition, of social interaction, of real people making real connections to one another, but for some reason, I can't get enough of them.  They make me believe, at the expense of other people, that there are two human individuals created exactly for one another with the wealth and resources to make an impossibly beautiful event possible.  It's a pipe dream, I know, but for those few, blissful seconds that I pick up a copy of Hello! magazine, I can pretend, the same way I pretend when I read a Jane Austen novel or watch the latest romantic comedy, that the world is nothing but a collection of archetypes, that there's an ongoing narrative to protect me from falling into harm's way or being alone for the rest of my life, and everyone gets exactly what they deserve.

Of course, I eventually have to close the magazine.  My incredulity can only take so much in a single day, and Hello! magazine pushes the limits of my disbelief's suspension.  Hello! is Canada's answer to People and Us Weekly from the United States.  It's nothing but columns of celebrity gossip, particularly surrounding the royal family and Celine Dion.  Half of it's reported in the same bold font, capital letters, and tiny quotables; the other half is barely confirmed hear say that's meant to inspire the dreamy feelings I recount in the first paragraph.  In the classroom, there's virtually no benefit to introduce Hello! magazine unless it's as a cultural artifact.  Reading it in conjunction with other magazines like MacLean's or textbooks would elucidate the sheer fantastical quality of Hello! magazine.  You could use it in a study about reporting, about contemporary politics and interests.  Or your students could examine it privately for the sake of pure enjoyment.  There's nothing like a good story.

MacLean's and Harper's have considerably more critical clout.  The former is perhaps the most accessible for students: it takes Hello!'s inflammatory language, its clipped, decontextualized comments and blends them with some actual reporting to create an interesting article that actually has some historical relevance.  This isn't to say MacLean's is the best source, only the most accessible one.  There's still an element of the dramatic to MacLean's that I don't appreciate.  In one of the first articles we read in class, a reporter discussed where Nelson Mandela was going to be buried...before Mandela had even died.  Speculative fiction should enter a history classroom undisguised.

Harper's is bar far the most objective, but without the dramatic quality provided by Hello! and MacLean's, along with its relentless pretentiousness, it would be difficult to introduce Harper's to anything less than a postsecondary setting.  There's always something to be said about feeling when fostering engagement in students, even if those feelings are inspired by pure artifice.  There's a time and a place for Harper's, and that's not high school.

Review: Canada's History

History magazines have to be the greatest magazines on the planet.  I thought Google was the only place to find great lesson ideas and teaching methods.  Apparently there are actual, textual documents that I can get subscriptions to for that kind of thing.  Canada's History/The Beaver has a dual purpose: provide some pretty awesome articles and interviews pertaining to Canadian history AND suggest ways of teaching history in the classroom through differentiated instruction, lesson plans, and field trips. 

Canada's History/The Beaver website is equally accessible for teachers, including my favourite page called "Young Historians".  It can be found under the education section, and it includes a long list of articles and blogs written about and by history students from across Canada.  The reason this page struck such a chord with me was because I'd never seen anything like this in the English department.  There's no celebration of the new critics in our midst; I can't think of a good reason why.  Maybe it's that English is so varied?  Huh, history seems to be the same way as a discipline, never mind!  Anyways, this page has a list of really fascination links - including ones that are totally punny!  I really love me some puns - that are all personal accounts from history students across the country.  My favourite was Shelagh Staunton, a student at UWO, who recently published a book of letters and correspondences from World War One.  Her shock was genuine, her excitement was sincere, and her research was very interesting.

In Literary Studies, which is not the only kind of criticism I have experience with but the only branch I've ever participated in at a graduate level, critics rarely explore their own personal experiences.  That's better left to individual reviewers on the Chapters site.  From the very first essay I wrote in grade 10 to the very last essay I wrote during graduate studies, I was told that my opinion on a particular work, any emotions it elicited within me, or any observations that lacked a textual reference had to be omitted from my work.  This is kind of a shame for me, since I really started to love criticism in graduate studies.  Watching new texts excited me.  I started to see the world as a growing collection of essays that had yet to be written.  There were even some texts that I found I liked strictly because they were critically interesting.  Nevertheless, no one in academic wants me to talk about my emotions, and if I do, they have to be in one of the lesser forms of literature: blogging, for instance.

What Canada's History/The Beaver is doing is fabulous.  They're validating emotional responses of history graduate studies, all of whom, I'm sure, experience the same thrill of analysis as I do, and while they're still delineating between academic writing and personal writing by hosting blogs, it's nice to see greater circulation for critics' personal responses.  Sir Ken Robinson states that the education system is training students to think of their bodies as nothing more than transports for their brains.  Critics generally behave as if this training has worked.  The body includes feelings, sentiment, emotional reactions, all that stuff that has no place in the academia in any other capacity than transport.  By showcasing the emotional reactions of critics and encouraging students to discuss their feelings, Canada's History/The Beaver doesn't disavow the emotional capacity of critics or the pleasure that goes into the act of criticism.  They also manage to avoid compromising their discipline in the process by showing the acts of textual analysis working in tandem with the emotional reactions.  As a result, Canada's History/The Beaver offers a broader definition of what it means to be a historian, which is something all teachers and students can benefit from. 

Mask Making

It was a day that I wish I brought my camera.  There's nothing more worthy of photographs than watching friends apply strips of plaster to their face in order to create masks.  I didn't apply the plaster to my face.  My make-up, which is a point of pride for me, usually takes about forty minutes to apply in the morning, and I couldn't bear the thought of ruining all my hard work for the sake of a mask.  Well, that, and I was didn't know how I would be able to clean up the mess it made.  Make-up for me usually includes at least four colours of eyeshadow, eyeliner, mascara, foundation, powder, blush, and a lip colour, all of which would have melted and swam underneath the wet plaster, leaving me looking more like the Wicked Witch of the West than the tropical princess look I was going for.

(I'm pretty sure my make-up was tropical that day.  I seem to remember being a little embarrassed when I declared I wouldn't be wearing the mask as I made it when I showed up for the lab, given my obscene amount of make-up.  I think I was wearing a mix of pinks, oranges, and yellows that would have made Joseph's coat look drab.)

Anyways, mask making begins with strips of plaster from the craft store that are dipped in water and applied on the face or, in the case of women who wear too much make-up, onto a tin foil mold of the face.  I pressed a two-ply piece of tin foil on my face and pressed it into the contours, an act that succeeded in not messing up my make-up.  I then began applying strips around the eyes and nose.

One of my favourite things to do with make-up is apply it in asymmetrical styles.  I started with colours at first - applying one colour on one eye and a contrasting colour on the other eyes - but I've since started playing with shapes and styles.  Over Christmas I created a look based on Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds where I painted small, black bird silhouettes flying up towards my right eye along the cheek while another flock of bird fluttered away from my left eye along the crease towards the temple.  I used that idea to form my mask: one half of the face sweeps up towards the temple, the other half curves down towards the jaw.  I also dotted the edge with small balls that I would paint later. It was suggested to me by the professor that I use the mask to perform a dramatic recitation of Sappho, but this never came to fruition.  The mask is still unpainted, and between all my other school work, I didn't have the time to memorize the poem.  It was a disappointment indeed; there's nothing I love more than being on stage nowadays. 

Mask making would be an awesome activity for any classroom.  I'm inclined to do it with my student for any project really.  English, history, cosmetology...it seems to be a good fit for just about anything.

A Little Bit About Laughter

I used to get into a lot of discussions about God, faith, and religion with my mother during my teen years.  She was the only adult I knew who wouldn't ignore my spiritual confusion or berate me for feeling atheistic.  I think she got annoyed with me, but she's my mother.  She has a high tolerance for annoyance, or at least she should after having four children, all of whom are annoying, not in the least counting myself.  Furthermore, she can't stop interacting with me just because I ask questions about the nature of existence.  Darwin agrees with me.

Anyways, I remember one conversation where I brought up prayer, and my mother told me that post-operative patients who pray experience faster recovery times.  I didn't believe her at first, but then I did the research and discovered that she wasn't just filling my head with maternal niceties: patients actually do experience faster recovery times when they are faithful to a religious denomination and pray regularly.  Apparently, the act of praying relaxes the body, stimulates the mind, and keeps the patient's mood more level.  Whether this is a placebo effect or not, I can't deny it.  The science is actually out there, all conducted by competent medical officials and published in peer-reviewed journals.  Check out PubMed and you'll see what I mean.

Prayer isn't the only act that speeds up recovery and assists in the healing process though.  As I learned in my graduate Indigenous Literature class and my Aboriginal Education courses, laughter also has healing properties similar to prayer.  Laughter and, by extension, humour causes the body to relax, stimulates the mind, and keeps the patient's mood elevated or at the very least more level.  I don't mean to suggest that the effects on the body while laughing are the same as well praying, but they are nevertheless similar.

The reason I'm writing about praying and laughing is because the one thing that really sticks in my memory from Veronica Fedor's visit to our class was her laugh.  It was a whole-body laugh, a lean-your-head-to-the-sky laugh, an open-your-mouth-and-bare-your-teeth laugh.  It was a laugh that took all her intercostal muscles, diaphragm, lungs, heart, neck, throat, larynx, jaw, and tongue to accomplish, a laugh that started somewhere in the depths of her abdomen and rose up to the ceiling of the Bora Laskin auditorium with a strength and force greater than any army or nation.  Hers was a laugh with the weight of ages, one that turned terror into something else, something manageable, something that, in retrospect, could be laughed at.

It's hard to believe her face was the same as the one in her passport.  That Veronica was much more steely and stony than the woman who sat in front of us in the Bora Laskin.  It's difficult to imagine her smiling or laughing when those old photos were taken, but I can't imagine that laugh was born overnight.  That laugh was cultivated.  It was reinforced over the years to withstand the hardships, built like a prayer to accept what cannot be changed and see the humour in it, the dumb luck, the good fortune, and the wonder.

The Ross Rifle

My firearm education began when I was quite young: too young, I imagine, by comtemporary standards.  Forty years ago, there wouldn't be anything strange about a six year old being taught to handle his- or herself around a gun.  Now, it seems, if something has even the slightest potential to do harm, it must be kept out of the child's reach until they're mature enough to handle it.  Of course, by that time, they're past the point of learning about safety or sense, which leads, I would argue, to greater danger in the future.

Not that all children should learn their way around guns.  Knowledge about firearms and weaponry isn't exactly necessary for children.  In my family, it certainly wasn't.  It just so happened that Dad had an interest, and he didn't want that interest to be misconstrued or engaged with irresponsibly.  Hence, the education in rifles at such a young age.  Two things happened in my household when you turned six: 1) you got a Swiss Army knife, and 2) you fired a gun for the first time.  True, it was a BB gun, but still, we handled the bigger hunting rifles when Dad was illustrating was he said were three rules of firearms.

"First," Dad said, "you always check to make sure the gun isn't loaded."  At six years old, I was barely bigger than a toddler, so checking the barrel of a hunting rifle was pretty much impossible on my own.  Nevertheless, I had the open weapon in my hands and was staring down the empty barrel a second later. The way Dad talked about checking the barrel had me paranoid that guns could somehow load themselves when you weren't looking.  Every time I stared into the barrel, I half expected to stare into darkness, the pinhole of light at the mouth of the weapon sealed up behind a bullet.  That was never the case.

The solid click of metal as the gun sealed shut still gives me shivers.  I am still scared of getting my finger caught in the interlocking metal sheaths, slicing open my skin or creasing my flesh into blood blisters.  Every time Dad and I get out the guns, I have phantom pain in my fingers, small stinging spasms like the gun barrel has nipped me.

"Second," Dad pressed his index finger on the stock, "never put your finger on the trigger till your ready to fire."  I lived in gun culture, even then, so much so that I couldn't fathom not having my finger on the trigger if I was holding a gun.  Dirty Harry never held the stock.  Han Solo never stayed a hand on his blaster.  My finger felt useless on the stock.  The feeling was foreign.  I was so inundated with weaponized heroes that not holding the trigger seemed wrong.

"Third," and this was the rule that had Dad shaking the rifle at me for emphasis, "never, ever point this at anyone.  Ever."  Even if I checked the barrel, even if my finger wasn't on the trigger, I was not supposed to take aim in anyone's general direction.  I was to point the gun at the floor if I was going to point it anywhere, and never have it trained on my feet.

This past summer, I was reacquainted with my father's firearms after a long absence, but I still remembered myself.  I checked to make sure they weren't loaded, I kept my finger off the trigger, and I didn't point them at anyone.  Dad gave me a different lesson this time though.  He told me all about his Ross Rifles.

Ask anyone in a grade 10 history class...okay, not anyone.  Ask someone who's been paying attention what the Ross Rifle is and it's pretty much guaranteed they'll tell you that the Rosses were one of the biggest problems faced by Canadian soldiers during the First World War.  The bolt would frequently jam or backfire, resulting in the injury or death for the shooter.  The fact that it was endorsed by Sam Hughes didn't help the Ross's reputation.  I, like many students, was under the impression it was a poorly made weapon, and I considered the Ross to be an indication of military mismanagement during the First World War.

Trust my father to set me straight in this matter.  No, he didn't deny that the Ross had its problems, but unlike my Grade 10 history teacher, Dad contextualized it for me.  The Ross had a special kind of bolt that automatically turned and locked into the barrel, unlike most bolts which had to be rotated in order to lock.  This made loading and reloading easier over other models from the time like the Lee Enfield.  This bolt made the gun popular for snipers during the war, a fact I didn't realize until I read Joseph Boyden's Three Day Road and had this conversation with Dad.

Unfortunately, this innovative bolt proved to be the Ross's undoing for trench warfare.  If any kind of dirt got lodged in the barrel, the bolt would jam and be nonoperational.  The bolt threads could be damaged from foreign matter in the barrel, and even when they were cleaned, the bolt would close but not lock, meaning the round could still be fired.  Wikipedia actually has a fantastic picture of the Mark II and III Ross Rifle bolts on their site, including a close-up of the threads.

Having handled rifles in the past, I was marveled by the Ross, which handled beautifully in my clean, not-at-all-trench-like basement.  I didn't get to fire it at the time, but I had a new respect for the weapon from this conversation.  I wish my Grade 10 history class could have instilled the same kind of reverence for a Canadian produced firearm.  No offence, Lee Enfields.  I'm sure you were a better alternative for the trench-bound.

Below are two pictures of my dad's Rosses.  Both have been sportized, but the shape of the weapon is still there: