oh canada

I really enjoyed this assignment. I have never been able to do a creative writing assignment for any of my previous classes and thought this was a really good way to express how one sees a story. A story is a thing which can be questioned or changed, which allows for many beliefs and opinions all of which have validity. Enjoy!

The world was created through the eyes of imagination and belief by a man searching for a new home and a new adventure. The man lived in a world that was paradise; water, land and food, but there was a cost to this perfect world. He was the only inhabitant. The days went by and he learned to swim, cook and build a shelter. Yet, the man yearned for something else and wondered if there was another place where there were other people. So with his building skills he built a boat. This boat was not very large, just enough space for him and his few belongings. A barrel of water, a few herbs and plants and some extra bark in case the boat was to leak. Upon the following morning, the man pushed off from the only place he knew, and with a last glance behind him, set off for the unknown.

The sun rose and the sun set for many days and there was no sign of any new land or people. The man began to doubt his adventure and wished for a moment that he was back in his own personal paradise. Why has he left such an amazing place, he was in need of nothing to survive. On the third day of his sailing, the man heard a rush of water, but it was not raining. The sky was clear and the only sound that water made to the man was that when it fell from the sky. “What could this noise possibly be?” the man thought. The water around the boat began to move faster and before the man knew he was falling down the most beautiful waterfall. His boat plunged into an abyss and his world went black.

He woke up to see a vast ocean in front of him. He heart sank, for he had come all this way and there was no land. The water stretched as far as he could see, but amidst the continuous blue he noticed a sail, which he presumed, must be attached to a boat. Arriving at this small vessel he was met by a young child who looked hungry. Upon seeing this new face the man exclaimed “I am new to this place and you are the first person I have ever met. From where I came there was only me.” The child looked to him and said “I am but a hungry explorer. Could you spare some food?” The man then passed the child his remaining food, upon which the child smiled, and continued on their way. The man grew desperate for land, for now he had no food.

Voyaging onward the man was met by a woman in a canoe. “I am but an explorer looking for a new home, but my canoe has a leak and it is filling with water. Can you spare some wood?” she asked. The man passed her his remaining wood upon which she placed at the bottom of the canoe. “Thank you” was all she said and was on her way. Now the man had no food and no wood to fix his aching boat.

At last, as this sun began to set, the man came upon an older man and woman in a sailboat. Before they spoke, the man passed them the last of his freshwater. They smiled, and before the couple sailed by the older man said “You have showed us compassion at a time when you look like you needed it. You will be well rewarded for your actions. You see young man, beyond this sea there is a place where you will find what you are looking for. Just believe in it and you shall see.” The man looked in front of him and all he could see was the water. Water, water, water.

He closed his eyes. He imagined a place where he would live among other people, build a home, have a family. By giving the passing people he met along his journey, he committed to the fact that he would have nothing. And something cannot come from nothing. And yet, with a little belief, and a little imagination it can. Among the campfire the man tells his story to his growing children. They smile and laugh, as this story seems an impossibility. Land cannot come from believing it shall be. The man looks towards the stars, and knows that through his kindness and his belief that by venturing from his comfortable abode he will find happiness, showing that anything can be achieved.

Reactions To The Story:

When I told the story to my sister she asked “Why did the man not just stay in his paradise?” And at first that would seem like the best option for him; he had everything he needed to survive and be content. She also said that most people, along a journey such as his, would not have given these strangers his last remaining food and water. This made me think about our own culture and how people do not always share or help others. My story almost fantasizes the fact that a person will always help those in need (even if it affects their own life) as this is not always seen in our society. I made the man in my story help others so that he would be able to achieve his goal in reaching a new home. By giving the little that he had he was able to reach his goals (my sister said this seemed little farfetched). I explained how the story related to the retelling of the original story and how our assignment was to recreate it, but still keep some elements in it. She saw the evil in my story as moving from paradise to a place unknown, and how my story could be changed so that the people he meets are unkind and not what he expected. Words can be altered and changed, but for those who are listening or telling must be careful as to what words they choose to use.

After I told the story my sister said that if a story is changed from the original, was the original changed from a pre-exisitng story? Stories in a sense can be passed down from generation to generation and the creation of a new story can always be linked to different stories too. In a sense then, from my sister’s standpoint, all stories are related to each other which form a coherent bond which helps the reader to connect to the story itself.

“What did Jesus Mean by Paradise?” The Dawn Christadelphians. Bible-UK. Web. 15 Feb. 2015. <http://www.bible-uk.com/index.html>

Coldplay Official. “Paradise.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube 18 Oct. 2011. Web. 15 Feb. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G4isv_Fylg>

Home is a place where an individual feels comfortable and happy; a place of belonging. One can have their most treasured items in a home, such as the growth chart of their child on the door frame, the place where they get their first kiss, or as a place of pure relaxation. A home can come in many different forms, for example a house, a country or we even call the Earth itself our home. Deciding on where one’s home is can be difficult, depending on where you are born or what events occur during your lifetime. What we consider to be our home can have fancy furniture, an expensive car and a pool in the backyard, but money cannot buy the feelings of a home. For the Native Americans living in Canada, they feel it difficult to call Canada their home due to the fact that they have been pushed out of their native land, land that once belonged to their tribes and their culture. Chamberlin describes this feeling of isolation in his home country “I don’t come from anywhere, except the Americas. And somebody else calls this place home, somebody who isn’t always happy having me around.” (Chamberlin 87). The sense of home becomes an imagined place where one does feel like they belong, but in the reality of the situation, home is a place which has already been resided in by people in our past history. For Chamberlin, home becomes a generic term for where a person lives for the moment, which may not feel like home to them if they have not chosen this home or is their home has been taken from them by a different culture.

The home is a place of language, culture and belief. Pico Iyer, the speaker in the TED talk, says “If somebody suddenly asks me, “Where’s your home?” I think about my sweetheart or my closest friends or the songs that travel with me wherever I happen to be.” This is a part of Iyer’s description of home, which also notes that “movement was only as good as the sense of stillness that you could bring to it to put it into perspective” (TED) which indicates that home is part of movement and stillness. I really enjoyed Iyer’s talk about the home as it opened up my ideas of home and that it is fluid; wherever one is they can call that place home. When the fundamentals of language, culture and belief are taken from a person, they lose their sense of the place in the home. Chamberlin has a distinct view regarding the loss of home in the settlement of Canada. The different way of looking at this is “the history of many of the world’s conflicts is a history of dismissing a different belief” (Chamberlin 78) which becomes an “unbelief” (Chamberlin 78). The unbelief becomes a form of savagery or difference in the society, which makes the person feel that they are not part of the culture, or more importantly the home. These two views are different in the fact that the first is the displacing of the person, from where their home is, and the second is the degeneration of their beliefs, which make them feel like they are not at home. Both are valid arguments as to the understanding of the settlement in Canada by the native individuals, but there are still consequences for each of these ideas. For this first, can anybody be said to have a home if that home was originally owned by a previous person? There can be no such sensation as having or belonging to a home, as one is displaced through history not able to actually find a location for a home. With the second theory the implication lies with the fact that the home is tied to beliefs, and if said beliefs are dismissed, there can be no home. Home is more than just beliefs; it is also an emotion of happiness.

“What Makes a Home?” Winnifred Gallagher. Oprah. Web. 5 Feb. 2015. <http://www.oprah.com/home/What-Makes-a-Home>

“Where Is Home?” Pico Iyer. TED, Jun. 2003. Web. 15 Jan. 2015. <http://www.ted.com/talks/pico_iyer_where_is_home?language=en#>

Chamberlin, E. If This is Your Land, Where are your Stories? Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada. 2003. Print.

Hi everybody!

My name is Alexandra and I attend UBC at the Vancouver campus. I am in my fourth year and I am majoring in English Literature. I enjoy learning about different forms of literature from all around different places in the world at different time periods. I love working with children and I work for the Walt Disney Company which pretty much describes my personality! I am a huge Disney fan and hope to work for a publishing company which is connected to the Walt Disney Company. I love the energy of UBC and have enjoyed all of my classes in Literature.

This is a photo of my sister and I under our family cherry tree.

I am really excited to be taking this course, as I have previously taken ENGL 222 which is also on Canadian Literature. I enjoyed learning about the Native culture and their forms of stories, which are oral as well as written. I have no blogging experience (and am not very tech savvy) so this will be a new form of learning for me! I am excited to be taking an online class that uses a different form of student to student interaction, as in previous online courses I have never experienced something like being connected via blogs. This course will not only help me learn about Canadian Literature, but also how to use the UBC Blogs! I am excited to learn about many different aspects of media and writing in Canada as well as literature sources.

Yes, I got to meet Rapunzel and Flynn at Disneyland!

This course enables the student to study the literature found in Canada, such as the Native culture and its form of orality in literature, and determine its importance in Canada’s history. The course will look into the storytelling aspect of literature and its foundations noted in Native culture. It will provide students with many different authors of Canadian literature, as well as media and web pages which all help to explain literature found in Canada. The course will use technology, such as the blogs, to communicate with other class members and the instructor, adding a technical element which also provides a form of learning for the students. The course will demonstrate what it is to be Canadian and how our present ideologies are reflected in past Canadian literature and media.

Buzzfeed. “Americans Try Canadian Food for the First Time. Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 2 Aug 2014. Web. 6 Jan. 2015.

The University of British Columbia. Canadian Literature, 2014. Web, 6 Jan. 2015.

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