Socials 11: Life in the 1950s

Oops: I added a rogue "s" to "Infrastructure"

Today we started by checking in with the Key Elements check list to recognize the balance between the "autonomy" aspect of the course and the "society and identity" aspect.  Next we checked for prior knowledge about life in Canada in the '50s.  Here is a copy of the notes:

We debriefed Ex #7, or rather, part of it.  Most of the Cold War items we had already discussed.  I did speak to the Auto Pact and told the class that it is a question that is often on the provincial exam in some form or another.  We then watched the People's History segment on the Leduc oil fields and the Kitimat smelter project.  We noted that there was no government interest in consulting the First Nations people or compensating them for the damage or loss to their territory.  This, of course, is a common theme in this era of our history.  Only very recently has the Supreme Court decision concerning the Tsilhqot'in (Chilcotin) people of the Williams Lake area of B.C. guaranteed that in the future the courts will not tolerate this sort of treatment of First Nations' land title. The segment on Kitimat showed how a single industry "company town"can rise up from the bush. There were many of these sorts of communities in Canada, both before and after the war.

We also saw a segment on the relocation of the Inuit people from the Hudson Bay region of Ontario and Quebec to the high Arctic to satisfy the sovereignty need to have "boots of the ground" in order to claim ownership of land according to international law.  It is interesting to note that the Canadian government still relies on the Inuit for this reason.  Inuit and other Aboriginal Canadians also currently serve as Canadian Rangers, a para-military branch of the Canadian Armed Forces, providing surveillance for, and guidance to the military in northern operations.

For homework I asked that you have pp. 169-171 in your textbook read for next class.

We had a tutorial today at lunch for those wishing to rewrite the Cold War test; that rewrite will be on Wednesday after school.