Global Gathering Place at Markam Heritage Fair, 2000

Inspector Relic: A Student Activity Exploring Sources and Artifacts that Uncover the Past

On May 11, The Global Gathering Place project was invited by the York Region District School Board to participate in their annual Heritage Fair. To encourage student participation and to promote understanding of the rich and diverse history of people that made up Canada, the GGP team designed an activity aptly titled "Inspector Relic" as part of the heritage program.

What is the purpose of "Inspector Relic"? It is an interactive journey for school children into various themes in ethnic and immigration history in Canada. What’s more, it uses the rich oral history, photographic and documentary resources of the Multicultural History Society’s archives to make history come alive for the students. Students were presented with these artifacts from the past and they were asked specific questions designed to guard them through the process of historical reconstruction and interpretation. The goal of the activity is to allow students to gleam the diverse experiences of real people through their own voices.

Close to a hundred students from grade 7 to grade 10 from various schools in the York Region pariticpated in the exercise in workshop format. The pictures below captured some of the activity of the day.
Photo caption: Dora Nipp of the MHSO assisting a student examine and interpret photographs from the life of Jean Lumb, a Chinese Canadian woman who was active in community and citizenship issues
A group of students are exploring photographs, newspaper clippings and other documentation to piece together meaningful narratives of refugees and immigrants.
Dora Nipp from the MHSO and Lalita Sood, a teacher from the York Region School Board, and a facilitator for "Inspector Relic", assist students with the use of different types of primary sources. To the right, the students are examining old photographs. To the left, students listen to a taped oral history, to help them understand the process of history writing.
Learning about Jean Lumb, a Chinese Canadian woman who pioneered for equal rights.
Through the photo of Harry Gairey, an African Canadian and civil rights activist, students learned about his work as a porter on the railways and his attempts to fight for social justice in Canada.
Here students learn about the life histories of a number of refugees from Czechslovakia, Somalia, Chile and Viet Nam to gain a fuller understanding of the human tragedy and the larger political reason’s underpinning immigration and refugee issues.
The struggle of immigrants to make a decent wage in Canada is the story these school children are discovering through the life history of Fortunato “Lucky” Rao. Mr. Rao is an immigrant from a small town in Calabria, Italy who became active in the labour movement and fights for working families.