REVISITING THE FIVE BEST “CANADA: A PEOPLE'S HISTORY" EPISODES

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BY: HAYLEY MAE JONES

Last year Mallory Horrill wrote an amazing post about the CBC series Canada: A People's History. For those of you who are not familiar with this series, it is a based completely on Canada's history. Each episode has a different length and covers different topics from different time periods.

Horrill's blog post takes readers back to her childhood education. She writes about her favourite episodes, and gets really excited. Reading her post brought back a lot of old memories. I reminisced about when I was an awkward elementary school kid just getting used to wearing braces. To be honest, I would prefer to forget those years, mostly because I got my tongue stuck in my braces... twice.

Awkward childhood aside, my experiences with these episodes was a little different from that described by Horrill. She looks back fondly on these episodes and recommends them to readers. I look back on my school experience and remember: sleeping.

I know that sounds a little harsh, but in my defence my elementary school history classes were reliant on these episodes. Students would watch, and re-watch the same episodes constantly. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I remember waking up from my nap in the middle of the episode and seeing that even the teacher wasn't paying attention.

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I didn't feel like history was exciting until I entered into high school, where I met passionate teachers that were dedicated to their topics. These teachers actively wanted students to like what they were teaching, and tried to be engaging. Under these teachers I learnt about both world history and Canadian history. I really enjoyed these classes because I saw the teachers cared.

The series, Canada: A People's History is really educational, and yes it is worth watching. However, try not to rely on the series to teach the whole story, and if you are a teacher, please don't force students to watch these episodes more than once.

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