Throughout this term, I have learned history can be analyzed in many different ways by many different people. History can be interrupted in multiple ways as well. In this term, I learned many things about Canadian history in the pre-confederate era that I never knew about, like the Les filles du roi, slavery in Canada, how important the gold rush was, and Charivaris. I learned how important the les filles du roi were in populating New France and building up the community, and that Canada did in fact have slavery, yet it is not well known to many Canadians and when slavery is brought up it is mostly linked to the United States. I learned more about the gold rush, and how it was hard to find gold, when so many people thought it would be easy to find and how dangerous it was to be involved in it for men and women, and learning about charivari’s was the most interesting part to me because people were humiliated for marrying a person of different race or having a large age difference between the couple, when in the era we live in now, it is more common. I also found it interesting how the charivari’s were relentless to getting what they wanted at whatever cost.
My idea of history has changed after this term, learning all of this and more has opened my eyes to what history truly is, and how interesting the past is when you really dive in to it. In this term, I realized historical thinking, just like history, can be interpreted in many ways, and can change when new evidence is found. Each article read for the reading logs are examples of historical thinking, each article has it’s own opinion of the topic and evidence to back up the opinion. Every article is well thought out and has a sense of passion for the topic within them.