Hullo English 470.

I’m Michael and I’m running quite late on the ball here, but I’m registered and ready to go now! Where’d that exclamation mark come from? I think I’m catching a bit of our professor’s enthusiasm.

I’m impressed with the well-organized site and the active Facebook page and hope I can catch up with everyone else.

The course’s topic attracts me because of first-hand experience as well as general interest in marginalization and justice or the lack-thereof. Where storytelling intersects, or perhaps underlies every aspect of Canadian life intrigues me. And even deeper, the concept of “being Canadian” seems a less than cohesive ideal.  I hope to learn.

The personal bend comes with some of my earliest learning in elementary school alongside numerous first nation peers. The Tsleil-Waututh Nation ran buses up Dollarton Highway to the school. Despite best intentions and often friendly interactions a tribalism eventually emerged and divided us. The earlier grades were friendly and innocent and without any sort of prejudice, but as we aged and sought out ways to define what “I,” “we,” and “them” meant, walls were slowly raised.

However there was no real animosity between groups, and factions of English students, French students, and First Nation students were established as zones of belonging. It was a sinister simplicity that eased us into unintended prejudices. Games, soccer, football, basketball, would be played out between factions, Natives vs. French, English vs. French, etc. Eerily reminiscent of early colonialism, I begin to feel an uneasiness that I can’t quite hold and face thinking back on those years.

I would guess that the institutionalized divides of reserve and suburb, English class and French class, assisted learning and not, helped the elementary factions thrive, but these were the forms we used to justify our mythologies of identity in so malleable a time of youth.

I am hoping that this class will give me a deeper insight into the forming of the prejudices I’ve participated in, and likely still participate in, so that I can find ways to be more aware and responsible.

As well as the societal, I’d like to learn the literary, taking into account the various techniques and stories that have helped shape and will continue to help shape our Canadian identities.

Or do we just like beer?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z9d1sk3N-M

Work Cited:

Lime, Stuart. School Primary School East Kilbrade South Park. 14 Jun. 2014. Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/en/school-primary-school-east-kilbride-1048983/ Accessed 19 Sep. 2016

“Tsleil-Waututh Nation.” Tsleil-Waututh Nation. http://www.twnation.ca/ Accessed 19 Sep. 2016

Molson Canadian. “Global Beer Fridge (Extended) | Molson Canadian.” YouTube. YouTube, 25 June 2015. Web. 19 Sept. 2016.