What We Recommend:
Mackin House Tour with Heritage Enhancement
Family Life Educational Kit or Virtual Tour

Big Ideas:
Our communities are diverse and made of individuals who have a lot in common.
Stories and traditions about ourselves and our families reflect who we are and where we are from.

Content Covered:
Ways in which individuals and families differ and are the same.
Personal and family history and traditions.
Needs and wants of individuals and families.
Rights, roles, and responsibilities of individuals and groups.
People, places, and events in the local community, and in local First Peoples communities.

What We Recommend:
Mackin House Tour with Heritage Enhancement
Family Life Educational Kit or Virutal Tour

Big Ideas:
We shape the local environment, and the local environment shapes who we are and how we live.
Our rights, roles, and responsibilities are important for building strong communities.
Healthy communities recognize and respect the diversity of individuals and care for the local environment.

Content Covered:
Characteristics of the local community that provide organization and meet the needs of the community.
Diverse cultures, backgrounds, and perspectives within the local and other communities.
Relationships between a community and its environment.
Roles, rights, and responsibilities in the local community.
Key events and developments in the local community, and in local First Peoples communities.
Natural and human-made features of the local environment.

What We Recommend:
Mackin House Tour with Heritage Enhancement
Food Culture Educational Kit

Big Ideas:
Canada is made up of many diverse regions and communities.

Content Covered:
Diverse characteristics of communities and cultures in Canada and around the world, including at least one Canadian First Peoples community and culture.

Sample Topics:
Daily life in communities (e.g. work, housing, use of the land, education, access to public services and utilities, transportation).
Key cultural aspects (e.g. language, traditions, arts, food).
Cultural diversity within your community.

Key Question:
What does community mean to you?

What We Recommend:
Mackin House Tour with Heritage Enhancement
Food Culture Educational Kit

Big Ideas:
People from diverse cultures and societies share some common experiences and aspects of life.

Content Covered:
Aspects of life shared by and common to peoples and cultures (e.g. education, family work).

What We Recommend:
Coquitlam’s Heart of Gold Virtual Exhibit Tour
Mackin House Tour with Heritage Enhancement
Rich Lands Educational Kit

Big Ideas:
The pursuit of valuable natural resources has played a key role in changing the land, people, and communities of Canada.
British Columbia followed a unique path in becoming a part of Canada.

Content Covered:
Economic and political factors that influenced the colonization of British Columbia and its entry into Confederation (e.g. Gold Rush population boom and bust, colonial debt, Canadian Confederation).
The history of the local community and of local First Peoples communities (e.g. local archives and museums).

What We Recommend:
Coquitlam’s Heart of Gold Virtual Exhibit Tour
Rich Lands Educational Kit

Big Ideas:
Natural resources continue to shape the economy and identity of different regions of Canada.

Content Covered:
Resources and economic development in different regions of Canada.

Sample Activities:
Use maps to describe the location of natural resources in Canada in relation to characteristics of physical geography (e.g. fish on the coasts, mineral resources in the Canadian Shield).
Identify significant natural resources in BC and Canada, including fish and marine resources, forests, minerals (diamonds, gold, asbestos, tin, copper), and energy resources (natural gas, petroleum, coal, hydro).

Key Questions:
What natural resources are most important to the economy of your community?
How has technology affected the discovery, extraction, processing, and marketing of selected natural resources?

What We Recommend:
Mackin House Tour with Heritage Enhancement
Fraser Mills Educational Kit

Big Ideas:
Economic self-interest can be a significant cause of conflict among peoples and governments.

Content Covered:
The urbanization and migration of people (e.g. land usage, access to water, pollution and waste management, population density, transit and transportation).
Economic policies and resource management, including effects on indigenous peoples (e.g. deforestation, mining, fisheries, infrastructure development, relocation of communities).

Key Questions:
Why do the majority of people in the world now live in urban centres?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of urbanization?

What We Recommend:
Mackin House Tour with Heritage Enhancement
Fraser Mills Educational Kit

Big Ideas:
Geographic conditions shaped the emergence of civilizations.

Content Covered:
Human responses to particular geographic challenges and opportunities, including climates, landforms, and natural resources.

Sample Activities:
Identify the key characteristics of physical environments that affected development and settlement for selected ancient cultures.

What We Recommend:
Heritage Today Educational Kit

Big Ideas:
Exploration, expansion, and colonization had varying consequences for different groups.
Changing Ideas about the world created tension between people wanting to adopt new ideas and those wanting to preserve established traditions.

Content Covered:
Changes in population and living standards.

Sample Topics:
Forced and unforced migration and movement of people.
Diseases and health.
Urbanization and the effect of expanding communities.
Environmental impact (e.g. resource and land use).

What We Recommend:
Evolving Coquitlam Educational Kit

Big Ideas:
The physical environment influences the nature of political, social, and economic change.
Disparities in power alter the balance of relationships between individuals and between societies.
Collective identity is constructed and can change over time.

Content Covered:
Global demographic shifts, including patterns of migration and population growth.
Discriminatory policies, attitudes, and historical wrongs.
Physiographic features of Canada and geological processes.

Sample Topics:
Disease, poverty, famine, and the search for land.
Why immigrants (including East and South Asian immigrants) came to BC and Canada, the individual challenges they faced, and their contributions to BC and Canada.
Influenced of immigration on Canada’s identity.
Historical reasons for the immigration of specific cultural groups to Canada (e.g. Irish potato famine, Chinese railway workforce, World War II refugees, underground railroad, Acadians, western settlement campaign, gold rushes).
Head Tax and other discriminatory immigration policies against people of East and South Asian descent.
Societal attitudes toward ethnic minorities in Canada (e.g. Chinese railway workers, Sikh loggers, Eastern European farmers, Irish famine refugees, African-American slavery refugees).
Discriminatory policies toward First Peoples, such as the Indian Act, potlatch ban, residential schools.
Internments.
Social history.
Gender issues.
Suffrage.
Labour history, workers’ rights.
Responses to discrimination in Canada.
Connections between Canada’s natural resources and major economic activities.

What We Recommend:
World War II: Home Front Virtual Tour

Big Ideas:
Historical and contemporary injustices challenge the narrative and identity of Canada as an inclusive, multicultural society.

Content Covered:
Discriminatory policies and injustice in Canada and the world, including residential schools, the head tax, the Komagata Maru incident, and internments.
International conflicts and co-operation.

Sample Topics:
National or ethnic discrimination (e.g. World War II internments).
Global armed conflicts and Canada’s role in them (e.g. World War II, Korea, Suez, Cyprus, Gulf War, Somalia, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Syria).