Hi there fellow classmate and reader!

Welcome to my blog for English 470A Canadian Literary Genres Studies! I am a English Major distance education UBC student from Vancouver, BC, currently residing in Montréal, finishing my degree while living as a musician, and training as a yoga instructor! I am taking this course to broaden my knowledge on Canadian history, especially the role of First Nations peoples, and the involvement of European settlers and colonizers in Canada.

I have a background in First Nations Studies; I have taken several classes in First Nation’s studies with a couple of universities; I have studied with the Haida Gwaii Higher Education Society, all the while living on Haida Gwaii for almost a year, while being immersed in, and leaning about the beautiful Haida culture, their past, history and current involvement with Canadian governments. Although I have become proficient with extensive events of Canada’s history with colonization, assimilation and canonization, Canada’s history is so complex and entails so much detail that I have yet to discover.

English 470A will provide a more profound understanding of the historical relationships, and tensions between literature and storytelling with the context and involvement of First Nations people. The readings for this course, such as “If this is your land, where are your stories”, by J. Edward Chamberlain, and “Green Grass, Running Water”, by Thomas King will presumably aid in the development of perspective while gaining the skills to critically process the state of literature in today’s Western world. Blogging is a very interesting and unique way to interact with other students in this class; sharing ideas and personal insight via comments and blogging, will push and challenge us to grow and develop an deeper comprehension on our class’s subject matter.

I predict this class will provide ways in which students will broaden their critical approaches of storytelling in literature, while applying it to modern uses of technology such as blogs, Facebook, and personal online comments on the World Wide Web. If you think about it…Facebook, blogging and comments are the modern vessels our world today uses for storytelling. We are now combining older ways of storytelling with modern day storytelling, all the while, leaning how to critically analyse and make sense of it all. Pretty fascinating!

On a personal note, I struggle with blogs, and constant updates on social media. This class will be challenging for me because I tend to disconnect with computer and social media (I would rather be in a Forest on the West Coast, without a phone or access to the internet). I tend to be slow at processing technology and understanding how it works. I will need a lot of patience, and may hand things in past their due date! One my initial intentions on taking this class was to strengthen my relationship with online social medias and modern day technology. My blogs will not look as aesthetically pleasing as other advanced bloggers in our class, but I guess we’ll see how it goes.

Thus, on a concluding note, I am extremely excited to commence this course and am keen on the online interaction with fellow students! Enjoy the class everyone, I hope we all take something really amazing from it!

-Arianne LaBoissonnière

Works Cited

1) Haida Gwaii Higher Education Society. Web. 19 May. 2015 <http://www.haidagwaiisemester.com/>

2) Council of the Haida Nation. 2013. Web. 19 May. 2015. <http://www.haidanation.ca/>

3) Government of Canada. Justice Laws Website: Indian Act. Government of Canada. 17 May. 2015. Web. 19 May. 2015. <http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/i-5/>

4) Haida Gwaii Higher Education Society. Web. 19 May. 2015 <http://www.haidagwaiisemester.com/>

5) Karen Wonders. Cathedral Grove. Web. 19 May. <http://www.cathedralgrove.eu/text/01-Cathedral-Grove-1.htm>