Lesson #3: What’s in a Name?

Canadian and World Studies: History and Visual Art

A Search for Identity

Have you ever wondered why Canada’s national flag features a red maple leaf? Why, in this digital age, Mounties on horseback symbolize our national police force? Why, despite your own surroundings, our country’s visual image often consists of remote landscapes dominated by trees and rocks? Why the Canadian Broadcasting Company exists?

Whenever you ask yourself these questions, you’re thinking about Canadian culture and the importance of its symbols.

National Symbols and Common Identity

The flag, Mounties, the CBC, and pine trees represent pieces of a common Canadian identity, no matter where we live. Each stands for a complicated idea that is part of a collective definition of Canada as a country, a place where people share values, experiences, fundamental political beliefs, and a negotiated cultural heritage. Taken together, these symbols form a kind of code for what it means to be Canadian.

Even though police now use cars, radios, and helicopters to keep citizens safe, Mounties on horseback remain important because they stand for Canada’s commitment to its founding principles of peace, order, and good government.

The maple leaf, our vast natural landscape, and the CBC serve us in similar ways. They remind us of the characters, objects, and organizations at the centre of our most famous stories.

Art, Symbols, and Stories

Visual art is very important to Canada’s national identity because, from the beginning, it has recorded the individuals, places, and events in our stories. Occasionally, art has even tried to tell us what we, as Canadians, should think.

The Canadian Cultural History Project

Explore the six Waddington Adventures and the six McMichael Stories in FootPrints. Listen, read, record, and research an artist, a location, a historical event, or a person. Then get involved. Use this website to share what you’ve learned and inspire others to join you in making Canadian cultural history.

Use your cellphone, your computer, your camera, or your digital recorder. Document and post your own Waddington Cultural History Project on the Students’, Teachers’ and Scholars’ Forum.

Be extraordinary. Get involved. Make history.

For Teachers

This FootPrints assignment can be used to support curricular objectives in History and Visual Arts. In Ontario, it specifically supports the following study units and expectations:

Canadian History in the Twentieth Century, Grade 10

Unit: Communities: Local, National, and Global

Overall Expectation:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of the elements of Canadian identity

2. Demonstrate an understanding of the ways I which outside forces and events have shaped Canada’ policies

3. Demonstrate an understanding of Canada&rsquos participation in war, peace, and security

Specific Expectations:

1. Explain to what extent certain national symbols represent all Canada and Canadians

2. Demonstrate an understanding of how artistic expression reflects the Canadian identity

3. Evaluate the influence of Great Britain and Europe on Canadian policies from 1900 to the present

Visual Arts, Grade 9

Unit: Theory and Analysis

Theory - Overall Expectations:

1. Apply an understanding of the elements and principles of design to personal, historical, and contemporary artworks

2. Differentiate artworks by period, style, method and materials

3. Demonstrate knowledge of a segment of early Western art history, Canadian art, and examples of the art of other cultures, nations and groups

Theory - Specific Expectations:

1. Identify, research, and describe visual characteristics and themes found in Canadian and other culture’s art

Analysis - Overall Expectations:

1. Explain, through critical analysis, the function (e.g., political, religious, social) of their own artworks and those of other cultures

2. Demonstrate an understanding of connections between art and cultural identity or context

Analysis - Specific Expectations:

1. Explain how artistic intentions are expressed in specific examples of historical and student artworks

2. Demonstrate an understanding that the function of art may vary from culture to culture