Building Canada's Railroad

Hello LINC 7 Students,

On Monday we'll watch this video about the building of the railway across Canada.

Please watch it as a preview if your listening is weak. You can watch it with the subtitles on.

The creation of the Canadian Pacific Railway was a task originally undertaken as the National Dream by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald.

The government wanted to build a railway linking the west and the east within 10 years of July 1871. Macdonald saw it as essential to the creation of a unified Canadian nation that would stretch across the continent.

First, the government had to make a contract with a company to build the railroad.

Competition for the lucrative contract to build the railway was intense, and in 1872, wealthy railway promoter Sir Hugh Allan (photo below) was awarded the contract..

However, Allan had also contributed around $350,000 to the Conservative party's election campaign!

When this became public knowledge in 1873, Sir John A. Macdonald's government was forced to resign. This was called the Pacific Scandal.

 

Here's another good link to the History of the Railway.

This is a long PDF file, but if you skim and scan it, you can get an idea of the various stages of the story of building our national railway. :)

 

:Legalization of Marijuana!

Hi Everyone,

Wednesday marks the official legalization of marijuana in Canada - a truly historic day!

Please check out what's happening in Uruguay:

https://news.vice.com/en_ca/article/evqnpk/heres-what-uruguay-has-learned-when-it-comes-to-legalizing-weed

Canadian History

Hello LINC 7 Students,

Here is the link to a new story about Sir John A. Macdonald.

Newfoundland Accent (dialect)

Hi Everyone,

Here's the link to that funny video of Mark teaching you how to speak like someone from Newfoundland !

Asking Tag Questions

Hi Everyone,

Here's a great video explaining the difficulties of asking, understanding and answering negative questions:

https://www.engvid.com/negative-questions-in-english/

Please watch this video and we will practice asking more negative questions next week.

Orange Shirt Day

Hello Everyone,

September 30 is Orange Shirt Day, honouring survivors of Canada's residential schools.

Residential School Story

Orange Shirt Day takes place in Canada on September 30. This annual event honours survivors of Canada’s residential schools. The orange shirt represents the indigenous child whose everyday life was stripped away.

Phyllis Webstad was six years old in 1973 when she chose a bright, new orange shirt to wear for her first day of school. When she arrived at the residential school in Williams Lake, BC, her orange shirt (a gift from her granny) was stripped off and she never saw it again. Phyllis was devastated and she felt worthless. Those feelings remained with her into adulthood, and the colour orange has always reminded her of that pain.

When Phyllis began sharing the story of her first day of school as part of her healing process, the idea for Orange Shirt Day caught on. Since 2013, many schools and businesses across Canada have taken part in this day to acknowledge the pain and harm caused to First Nations children through the residential school system. 

All LINC teachers at VCC encourage you to wear orange on the last day of school in September (Sept. 27). 

As part of our work on the History and Geography of Canada, we'll be studying residential schools and the devastating effect that they had on Indigenous people across Canada -- even into the 1970s. The last residential school was closed in 1996.


Key Facts About Residential Schools

Residential Schools: government-sponsored schools run by churches  

Primary Purpose: to integrate or assimilate Indigenous children into mainstream, Euro-Canadian culture  

Number of students who attended: 150,000 (estimate)  

Number of students who died: 6,000 (estimate; records incomplete)  

How long did they operate?
Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, accepted first boarding students in 1831.
Gordon Residential School in Punnichy, Saskatchewan, closed in 1996. 

Federal Ridings in Canada

Hello LINC 7 Students,

When you are doing pages 132 and 133 in your homework handout, you'll need to use UPDATED information.

Unfortunately, the info in the book that I copied in OUT OF DATE!

Please get the CORRECT INFORMATION at this website:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_federal_electoral_districts