March 4

IB 30/35

I returned your Paper 2 on Topic 5: The Cold War, which focused on the origins of the Cold War. Many of you wrote quite well, and included historiography on the origins from the Orthodox, revisionist and post-revisionist schools. We got back to looking at the Vietnam War by watching and excerpt from "Born on the Fourth of July".

Social 30-1

I returned your Unit 1 WRA II Essays today. Please see me in tutorial if you'd like to discuss your essays. We then watched a couple of videos from the BBC 20th Century History series called "Boom and Bust" and "FDR and the New Deal". You were to complete the film study sheet that went along with "Boom and Bust", and you were to take your notes on "FDR and the New Deal". Please check your e-mail tonight for a very important booklet on monetary and fiscal policy. I will go over the contents of this booklet with you on Wednesday.

Social 20-1

We continued to examine "The Causes of World War I" today. I will send this PowerPoint presentation to you this afternoon. We also watched a video from the CBS video series on World War I called "Doomed Dynasties". Please see the study guide for your Chapter 3-4 Test here, and the study guide for the Unit 1 Final Exam here. The Chapter 3-4 Test is on Wednesday, and the Unit 1 Final Exam is on Thursday. Please check your e-mail accounts for the WWI as a Bar Fight document and the PowerPoint presentation.

I mentioned this in class, so I thought that I would share a link to a website that discusses J.R.R. Tolkien's experiences in the Great War, and how that influenced his writing of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, specifically the Journey through the Dead Marshes. The Great War was also a time when some of our most famous Canadian landscape artists came to the forefront, I'm referring to the Group of Seven, of course. Can you see some similarities in the pictures that I'm posting below?














I guess my point is that art is based on personal experience, and these artists were heavily influenced by their experiences in the Great War.