CHC 2PI-01/02 Portable 1 Mr. J. Ashley

My name is Mr. Ashley, I teach at Huron Heights and I love Canadian History. History is not just something that exists in a textbook or in a lecture or in this class. It is literally the story of us.

Right now, you and I are living Canadian History. Canadian History has had or will have an impact on your life. One day, believe it or not, your life will be in the history books.

When preparing this course, I was shocked to see how much of my life is already there and how many important things have happened in my life time.

Each generation has their “Where were you When...” moments. These moments are the moments that define a generation. These moments give people a collective experience as everyone knows where they were when they happened and they experienced them together.

I was lucky enough to get to know my great grand-parents well when I was a child. My great-grandfather remembered going to school in Austria during World War I. He could hear the guns and artillery from his small schoolhouse. Like many others, he left Europe after the war to seek a better life for his family in Canada.

My Grandparents were children during World War II. They remember a life before television, computers, and the internet. They were raising young families, when Russia and the United States almost launched the world into nuclear war and a year later when John F. Kennedy was shot. They were adults before the Canadian Government created Universal Health Care.

My parents were in elementary school when Neil Armstrong and his crew landed on the moon for the first time. A year later, Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau suspended civil rights in Quebec after a terrorist group abducted two politicians to try and force Quebec out of Canada. They remember watching the last and deciding came between Canada and Russia in the 1972 Summit Series (Canada won by the way).

The first significant moment in Canadian History that I remember was Canada’s 125 th Birthday. I was eleven years old and was spending a week with my great aunt and uncle in Prescott, Ontario. My great aunt and I were participating in an art class that week in the 1000 Islands. On July 1 st, we skipped class and went to Ottawa, Ontario to participate in the festivities and see Queen Elizabeth II.

The second significant moment in Canadian History that I remember was the Second Quebec Referendum on separation. It was a strange concept for a grade nine student that the country could be torn apart based on the outcome of one vote. I had travelled to Quebec several times as a child and loved the province and the language. The week before the vote, I travelled with a group of staff and students from my school to a rally to try to keep Quebec from separating and I remember watching the results on TV relieved that Quebecers decided to stay.

The final significant moment in History that I remember was the events of 9/11. I was in my second year of university and had just moved into my first ever apartment. Classes had just started. I didn’t have morning classes so I decided to get a load of laundry done at the laundromat down the street. When I arrived the attendant asked if I had heard what was going on in New York and that there had been a terrorist attack. CNN was on the TV and we watched in horror as the second plane hit the Twin Towers. It was the first time in my life that I had seen an act of war happen in real time.

Not all the moments we remember are major life changing events. My Parent’s Generation My Generation

History impacts us all and we all play a role in it. Some of us will be History makers. Some of us will be History observers. But, we will all be impacted in some way by the events of History. Today’s newspaper headlines are tomorrow’s History textbook chapters.

This semester we will start with the moments that have impacted you and what your kids will be reading about you in the future and then go back in time almost one hundred years to see how we got where we are today. You will get the opportunity to learn about the past, and to see how it impacted the present. I look forward to spending this semester with you and sharing what it is that makes this country one of the greatest with you.