It was a busy night at the museum this week for two St. Albert schools as hundreds of students took on the roles of historic Canadians.
About 250 Grade 4 and 5 students at the Leo Nickerson and Muriel Martin elementary schools held their annual heritage fairs. The events, which are similar to science fairs, challenged students to learn about historic Canadians and tell others about them as living museum pieces — just like the living statues in the film Night at the Museum.
It's meant to be a fun way to teach kids about history, said teacher Patricia Toth-Voros, who organized Thursday's event at Muriel Martin.
"I always loved social [studies], but I always thought that the history part was boring."
This event gave students a chance to actually become a historic figure, making history more real to them.
Hannah Beirnes, who played a barefooted Laura Secord, said her research into Secord's life inspired her. Secord was a woman who, at the time of the War of 1812, travelled about 31 kilometres in her bare feet to warn Canadian forces about an American ambush.
"She saved a lot of lives with her courage," Beirnes said. "I'm proud of her."
Museum is open
About 140 Muriel Martin students lined the school's walls Thursday afternoon as a part of a rehearsal for that night's grand opening. Leo Nickerson held its 110-student event Tuesday.
Each student came up with a costume and a speech to give to museum patrons, Toth-Voros said, and then stood perfectly still until someone came and tapped a "button" (a sticker) on their hands. The students then unfroze, did their skits and answered questions.
New to the museum this year were nameplates behind each student with QR codes (barcodes that look like square jumbles of pixels), Toth-Voros said. Visitors could scan the codes with their smartphones to get a website with more information on the figures portrayed by the students. "It helps the adult participate and learn a bit about the history they've forgotten."
Toth-Voros said this was her second year she's done the heritage fair in this way, having gotten the idea from teacher Andrea Daly at Leo Nickerson.
Heritage fairs started in the mid-1990s as a way to promote history, Daly said. There used to be regional and national fairs too, but those have fallen by the wayside.
Daly said she started doing fairs back in 1999 after she realized her junior high students knew next to nothing about Canadian history.
"It was quite horrible that they could name all these [American] presidents … and they knew so little about Canada," she said. "I thought, there's got to be a way to bring that stuff to life."
Daly said she hit on the Night at the Museum theme about three years ago.
"It's a different style of learning," she said, as it requires kids to do more than just looking something up on Wikipedia. "They start realizing that history is all around them."
For example, one student at her school researched Wilfrid "Wop" May, the Canadian First World War pilot famous for being in the final battle of the Red Baron. The student not only researched May at the Aero Space Museum of Calgary, but also interviewed his son, Denny May, who was one of the judges at Nickerson's event.
Historic people
Muriel Martin's museum had Joseph Tyrell chipping fossils out of rock, Anthony Henday wearing a cardboard canoe, and Michael J. Fox preparing to go Back to the Future.
Standing next to some Lois Holes and a Tim Uppal (MP for Edmonton–Sherwood Park) in a green felt dress was Princess Louise Alberta, played by student Daisy New. "Do you like my new painting?" she said, referring to the reproduction of one of the princess' works on a nearby easel.
The princess was a very headstrong woman, she said, and one of Queen Victoria's nine children. She also went to art school, which was rare for women at the time, and married the then-Governor General of Canada, who named Alberta in her honour. "I thought it was kind of cool that there was a province named after her," New said, adding that it would have been funny if the Governor General had used her first name instead.
Gabriel Haskins was flying a miniature Lancaster bomber as he portrayed Ian Bazalgette, the only Albertan to win the Victoria Cross in the Second World War. Bazalgette's crew was on a bombing run in France when he ran into heavy enemy fire.
"He was able to bomb the target, but the wing of his plane was left severely on fire," said Haskins.
Ordering his crew to bail out, Bazalgette tried to land the plane to save two wounded crewmembers.
"He was able to land a flaming aircraft with only one engine," Haskins says, and even avoided hitting a village in the process. The plane exploded moments later, killing everyone on board.
Canadians can't make good decisions about the future if they don't understand their past, Daly said. "It's who we are. It's where we come from."
