Category Archives: Lesson 2

In order to address this question you will need to refer to Sparke’s article, “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation.” You can easily find this article online. Read the section titled: “Contrapuntal Cartographies” (468 – 470). Write a blog that explains Sparke’s analysis of what Judge McEachern might have meant by this statement: “We’ll call this the map that roared.”

I have never really put much thought into the formation of maps, but this lesson has definitely sparked an interest for me.  After putting some serious thought into it, several questions came to mind that I had never thought to necessarily be important ones – how are maps created?; who has a say in their creation?;  how can maps change through time?; and what happens when there is a land dispute?

When a map was brought out to Judge McEachern in court during period of 1982-1983, he said ‘We’ll call this the map that roared’.  After quoting this in his writing, Sparke immediately refers to this as a ‘paper tiger‘.  Being unfamiliar with the term ‘paper tiger’, I looked it up and found the definition to be ‘something that seems threatening but is ineffectual and unable to withstand challenge’.  To me this was a very interesting thing to put some thought into.  The Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en people had produced a map in court in order to confirm that the land was in fact rightly theirs, but in reality was the map they produced ‘ineffectual’ as Sparke immediately alludes to?  This map had been created through the oral histories of the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en people, but was that oral history that created this map enough for Judge McEachern to justify re-creating the boundaries of general maps of the day – not in his opinion at that time.

It is clear to us that this battle of oral history vs. today’s actualities is ongoing, but there has definitely been much positivity created regarding this topic in recent decades.  It is amazing to learn that the Supreme Court overturned the initial decision made by Judge McEachern – and this shows that oral histories can and should make differences.  In my eyes, Judge McEachern, by saying ‘We’ll call this the map that roared’, implied that this map was to him in fact a paper tiger, and although it had the initial voice to raise and ‘roar’, did it have the follow through? The fact that this case was over turned is evidence that oral histories make a difference in the decision making of today.

Works Cited

-Sparke, Mathew. “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88.3 (1998): 463- 495. Web. 04 April 2013.

-http://www.thecourt.ca/2007/12/10/the-anniversary-of-delgamuukw-v-the-queen-two-legacies/

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_tiger

Write a short story (600-1000 words max) that describes your sense of home and the values and stories that you use to connect yourself to your home.

Home to me is a place of togetherness.  Growing up, home was just that – my dad, mum, brother and I were always together.  Yes, my brother and I would be off at school during the days, and my parents would be at work, but when we were at home we were always together.  Sports, mainly soccer, was also a stronghold around our house.  With dad being our coach when we were younger, and mum being our biggest fan, soccer was usually a hot topic around the house.  During the weeks we would be running between different soccer practices and academies my brother and I attended, and on the weekends we would be prepared and excited to get to, and hopefully win, our respective games.  This togetherness goes beyond the physical confines of our home.  I would always feel like I was safe at home regardless of where we were.  Whether it was soccer trips that took us to all corner’s for the world, annual summer trips up to Green Lake, or simply a family hike our outing around home.   The togetherness of our home and family is something I will never forget, because even now that we’re all older, if we are all together in the same place, it is exactly the same.  This aspect of home will never change for us.

Here is a photo of my brother and I doing our thing together when we were younger (not sure what’s up with the face he’s making):

Beyond the home I grew up in with my parents and brother, home to me is also the homes of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins that we constantly visited.  Any downtime in our soccer schedules would mean a trip to Nanaimo/Parksville to see my mum’s family, or a trip to Victoria to see my dad’s family.  The comfort of our families constant inclusion and interest in one another’s lives is what also makes these places home.  Therefore, it is not so much the physical aspects of our homes that make it, but rather the people, inclusiveness, and inherent interest in each others lives that create my definition of home.  Although some members of our extended family have moved further away now, and we don’t get to see them as often, we all always take off right where we left off. At home. Together.

All in all this assignment taught me something I had never really thought about before.  Previously when I would think about home, I would think of my parents house, and how it is today.  But really, that isn’t what home is to me when I really sat down to think about it.  Home to me is the family I have, and the experiences I have been through together with them.

Here is a photo with some cousins, my Grandpa, brother and myself on a more recent trip to my Grandpa’s place in Nanaimo:

Works Cited

‘Green Lake, BC’. Map. Google Maps. 30 Jan, 2015. Web. 30 Jan, 2015. https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Green+Lake,+British+Columbia+V0K/@51.2126726,-122.0112639,7z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x53800f87c7d32af5:0xe0c3c7e305081269