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Class photo outside of Shannon Estate! This is the very first class photo I’ve ever taken in my undergrad! I will miss this class immensely. As I enter summer break, I’m sure I’ll be thinking about this class, all these people, and the Romantic period constantly, as I explore Vancouver. It has been a true pleasure thanking this class. Writing this is making me emotional (’:

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Covering Reflection: What I learned, final thoughts, and everything in between

My goal with this Tumblr page was to find a way to creatively and effectively showcase my learning and literary analysis in a multimedia format, to track my learning and writing process over the course of this class, as well as, to reflect on and view all of my reflections as a whole at the end of the course, because, while the content of the texts we read differed greatly, they are all interconnected, and encompass the ideas of Romanticism and the Romantic period. In week one I began my journey exploring Romantic period literature in the context of settler-colonial Vancouver with the work of William Wordsworth, the father of English Romanticism. Wordsworth’s poem very much emulates what we know English Romanticism to be about: the beautiful and the sublime, through his fascination with the natural environment around him. In week two and three, we moved on and explored Transatlantic slave trade literature through Olaudah Equiano autobiography, Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, and poems by Phillis Wheatley Peters. Both offered vastly different accounts of enslavement and African American literacy history. In week four, we moved on to Walter Scott’s Waverley, and explored civil wars and the history of legitimation crisis with the crown. Finally, in week five, we looked at the more fictional and comedic side of literature through Jane Austen’s Emma. Through the course’s carefully selected reading list, we explored a wide range of literature from the romantic period, and the impact these literary pieces had in the making of settler colonial Vancouver, and the rest of the world for that matter, is clear.

The existence and continual use of each of these readings keep the ideas of the Romantic-period alive, both in memory and in practice. While Wordsworth’s poetry reminds of the beauty of the natural world around us, in the context of settler land use in Vancouver, Wordsworth reminds us of the coloniality of plants. The native plants he writes about, specifically daffodils are all found here in Vancouver. At first, we stare and admire these beautiful plants, but then we are reminded of the ugly truth, which is these plants are foreign to this land and forcefully planted into it. The beauty that Wordsworth writes about, may have contributed to this desire for settler colonialism and assimilation, through place-making and planting. Through an exploration of Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography, Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, we are reminded of a part of literature and history that is often overlooked and forgotten. He reminds of those slaves who were brought onto these colonial lands, to work and help provide and maintain the riches and luxuries we read about in Jane Austen’s Emma. Equiano’s text provides us with new ways of thinking about exploration and waterways. Wordsworth introduces the beauty of exploration and stopping to take in surroundings, but Equiano shows us the very ugly parts of our surroundings, the histories of systemic violence, enslavement, and assimilation. Additionally, when we think of oceans in this regard, it can be seen as a place of both connect and disconnect. On the one hand, the ocean is what took Equiano away from his family and created divide through colonialism. On the other hand, as we read, it can also be seen as a place of connection; it is where Equiano meets other formerly enslaved Black people and sailors, which creating a cultivating ground for activism and abolition. Furthermore, it brought to light the ways in which this period of history transformed, not just places, but minds. For example, in my reflection I discussed how we witness the assimilation of young Equiano and see the development of racialized thinking and othering through his desire to adapt the European culture and mannerisms he observes. Along with that, Phillis Wheatley Peter’s poetry, offers even more insight to the lives of those enslaved, When I think of how the transatlantic slave trade contributed to settler land use in Vancouver, I immediately think of plantation workers and B.T. Roger’s sugar mill, one of the pioneers for Vancouver’s industrial businesses. The loss of Vancouver’s Black neighbourhood, which we know to be Strathcona, is also a reminder of these events which occurred in the Romantic period.

Walter Scott’s Waverley and Jane Austen’s Emma are two versions of a marriage plot written in different genres and in opposite parts of Europe, during the same period. With Waverley, I was fascinated with the female characters as it seemed like one character represented living life romantically, while the other represented a more practical, stable pursuit to life. While the ending, made it seem like Scott condemned Romanticism, it also brough to light qualities people may have valued during this period. Both texts illustrate the vast range of history of the Romantic period, but it also represents various aspects of European society we see being admired and a part of the settler imaginary when we think of place-making. The street signs we visited, which were named after Scott’s novels and characters are very telling of what settler’s were inspired by when in the process of naming and claiming lands. While there are not roads named after Jane Austen’s books, the Shannon estate was a clear example of settler idealization of British aristocracy and landed gentry, which we read about in Emma.

Through an intellectual exploration of our weekly readings in the form of critical literary analysis in conjunction with our site studies, I learned so much about the Romantic period in the context of settler place-making. This course and the process of writing these reflections really encouraged me to read more intently, and to make connections between these violent histories and Vancouver. I now find myself making connections to the Romantic period everywhere I look, and I do not think I could read another Romantic period literature without thinking about its role in settler place-making. I learned about connections I never would have made otherwise, and the goal of my reflections is to ensure these histories and all the people involved are remembered and represented.

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WEEK 5: JANE AUSTEN’S EMMA

There is truly so much to be said about Emma and all of Jane Austen’s work. Austen is notable for her marriage plots, stubborn, yet swoon-worthy male love interests, outspoken female leads, realistic characters, and her witty remarks, but for the purpose of this reflection, I will be focusing on elements of Emma in relation to settler place-making, as that is the theme of our class! Professor Burgess posed the question to us in class: “what does Austen’s novel enable settlers to do?” and to be honest, I couldn’t figure out the answer until our site visit of Shannon Mews Park and the Shannon estate. Emma serves to fulfill settler idealization and imagination. By this, I mean that Emma allows readers, and more specifically, settlers, to imagine an ideal society, like the community we observe in Highbury for themselves, and feel as though we are living in their world. When I think about the placement of a grandiose English estate in the middle of a forest in settler Vancouver, I am reminded of the magnificent and wealthy lives of the upper-class characters in Emma, such as Emma herself, Mr. Knightley, and Frank Churchill to name a few. The remnants of British culture we still see here in Vancouver today, is very much the kind of culture and descriptions we read in Emma.  I keep coming back to the following quote:

“It was a sweet view—sweet to the eye and the mind. English verdure, English culture, English comfort, seen under a sun bright, without being oppressive.” (Austen, 276)

This is a description of the landscape view Emma and her group come across at Abbey-Mill Farm while visiting Donwell Abbey. Emma admires and approves of the accents of Englishness she observes around her, suggesting a sense of English nationalism. It seems that Emma is content with the social structures of England and the society that she lives in. On the one hand, this could be interpreted as an anti-exploration manifesto; Emma has no interest in exploring and likes the environment that she is in. On the other hand, for readers reading this book, this passage can serve as a call to action; to adapt and spread English culture.

I also found this discussion in class about the critiques of exploration interesting. There is a moment where Frank Churchill talking about wanting to leave England and get away to explore the world, in which Emma questions him and asks why on earth he would want to leave the comforts of England, the place he is most familiar with:

“’As soon as my aunt gets well, I shall go abroad,’ said he. ‘I shall never be easy till I have seen some of these places. You will have my sketches, some time or other, to look at – or my tour to read – or my poem. I shall do something to expose myself… I have more than half an expectation of our all going abroad. I assure you I have. I feel a strong persuasion, this morning, that I shall soon be abroad. I ought to travel. I am tired of doing nothing. I want a change. I am serious, Miss Woodhouse, whatever your penetrating eyes may fancy – I am sick of England – and would live it tomorrow, if I could.’

‘You are sick of prosperity and indulgence. Cannot you invent a few hardships for yourself and be contented to stay’” (280).

For Emma, it seems that Highbury and Hartfield are all she needs to be happy with life, whereas for Frank Churchill, he sees value in exploration. It seems as thought Mr. Churchill is encouraging the settler imagination and the desire for more. Mr. Churchill seeks adventure and new experiences, and it seems like all the other characters in Emma encourage Emma to seek adventures in different ways: encouraging her to get married and pursue love, inviting her to explore places such as Box Hill. However, something I found interesting was how after the situation at Box Hill, in which Emma is rude to Miss Bates and insults her, Emma’s character goes through a change, and she becomes less snobby and more considerate of others. Thus, I’d argue that this text could also be read as an encouragement for exploration as a way of learning and gaining knowledge. Emma’s character ultimately changes because of what happened, and this experience would not have occurred had she never left Hartfield.

Out of all the texts we explored this semester, Emma was my favourite one (and this is definitely a biased opinion because I was already a fan of Jane Austen’s work), there is just something about Austen’s writing style, and her characters that make her narratives feel so personal. Through the vivid descriptions of the character’s surroundings and the wittiness and roundness of characters, I truly felt like I was experiencing everything alongside Emma and company at Hartfield.

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WEEK 4: WALTER SCOTT’S WAVERLEY

Walter Scott’s Waverley is a historical narrative set in Scotland, during the Jacobite uprising. As we discussed in class, Waverley is very much a story about the questions and legitimacy of inheritance, and how civil wars are healed, but in my reading of Waverley, I was very compelled and intrigued by the two female characters and love interests for Edward Waverley, Rose Bradwardine and Flora MacIvor. In the setting of a civil war, Walter Scott was able to include a marriage plot and two very unique women in his story and I think there is something to be said about them. In this reflection I will be exploring the role of their characters in this story.

“The ladies of the party did not escape his censure. He allowed that Flora Mac-Ivor was a fine woman, and Rose Bradwardine a pretty girl. But he alleged that the former destroyed the effect of her beauty by an affectation of the grands airs which she had probably seen practised in the mock court of St. Germains. As for Rose Bradwardine, he said it was impossible for any mortal to admire such a little uninformed thing, whose small portion of education was as ill adapted to her sex or youth as if she had appeared with one of her father’s old campaign-coats upon her person for her sole garment.” (Scott, 272-273)

In this passage, Waverley makes clear distinctions between the two girls. It seems like Scott’s intentions with the inclusion of the two female characters and love interests for Waverley is to compare the two. Waverley sees Flora as a woman, and Rose as a girl. What sets them apart seems to be their personalities and attitudes: Flora is more outspoken and acts high and mighty, whereas Rose is naïve and uneducated, and these seem to be undesirable traits for both women. Yet, as we know, Waverley ends up marrying Rose, while Flora joins a convent.

The distinctions between Rose and Flora leaves me to wonder if this novel served as a guide for what a marriageable woman should be during the romantic period, and if Waverley can be read as a warning or encouragement, to follow a realistic and practical pursuit of life, rather than a romantic one. Flora’s character is very much so the romantic one; she is independent, passionate in what she believes in, and speaks her mind, whereas Rose is willing to be domesticated, and assume the role of a married woman and be entirely devoted to her husband. Although it seems like Waverley falls for both women, he chooses Rose, the more practical option. It seems as though Scott discourages living life romantically, as Flora does so, and ends up living in a convent, mourning the death of her brother and no longer being able to reproduce and continue her family lineage. By choosing this conclusion for Flora, it almost feels like a metaphorical death of romanticism.

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WEEK 3: PHILLIS WHEATLEY PETERS, “ON IMAGINATION”

I really appreciated the studies we did on Atlantic slave trade literature, as I strongly feel this is a part of history and literature of the Romantic period that is overlooked and forgotten. It is interesting to note that while slave trade was abolished for British participants in 1907, slavery was not entirely abolished in UK colonies until 1832. I was especially drawn by Phillis Wheatley Peter’s work and life story. As we learned in class, Peters was born in Senegal or Gambia in about 1754 and enslaved as a child and brought to Bostin 1761. While she was enslaved, her employers taught her how to read, white, and speak English, and she began publishing poems at the young age of 14. Her poem, “On Imagination,” was published in 1773, when she was only 19. In this poem, she explored the power of imagination and the ideas of freedom as an enslaved person. It’s almost ironic, in that her imagination and freedom is only confided in what she can imagine and express on paper through her words. She describes imagination as "thy various works” (line 1), and “thy wond’rous acts” (line 3), implicating the range of variety our imagination offers us. In addition, I found it interesting how Peters alludes to Greek and Roman mythology, such as “Helicon” (line 5), and “Sylvanus” (line 23). It seems that Peters attempts to demonstrate her higher education, and perhaps this also ties in with the themes of imagination as freedom from enslavement. It was very rare for enslaved peoples to get access to formal European education, so by utilizing these allusions in her poem, I wonder if Peters is trying to emphasize the possibilities of what freedom could be like for enslaved people. At the time, only those with the ability to read and had her level of education could understand her poem; it likely was not accessible to enslaved persons, which leads me to wonder who the audience of this poem was. In the final line of the poem, Peters writes, “Cease then, my song, cease the unequal lay” (line 53). The speaker is asking, or rather, pleading for an end to the inequality between imagination and reality. Thus, perhaps her audience were the Europeans who enslaved her, and millions of others like her. Peters clearly sees the imbalances between the treatment of enslaved people and non-enslaved people, and she envisions a life in which she is entirely free.

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WEEK 3: THE LITERARY TRINITY - STAINED-GLASS WINDOW AT STRATHCONA ELEMENTARY 

My first thought when I saw the stained-glass window in Strathcona was, “what on earth is this doing here?” There was no way these students knew who the three figures in the window were, I feel embarrassed to admit this, but I only learned who Thomas Moore and Robert Burns were this semester through this class. Being placed in an elementary school, in the oldest settler neighbourhood, with the largest Chinese and Indigenous population, suggests that the window stood to say something to the people in the neighbourhood: these figures represented a new period in settler Vancouver in which the main figures of society were well educated and white. The stained glass celebrated and encouraged assimilation of society into European culture. It is also notable to mention that Shakespeare, the English poet in the centre of the window, is depicted larger as well, while the two on the sides, are Scottish and Irish poets. Perhaps, this was also intentional commentary, suggesting that something about English culture and influence being greater than the other two. Being placed in a school where young, impressionable, students come to learn, it seems that there is a clear message being transmitted here about the values of education and colonial culture.

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WEEK 2: Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

“I have often reflected with surprise that I never felt half the alarm at any of the numerous dangers I have been in, that I was filled with at the first sight of Europeans, and at every act of theirs, even the most trifling, when I first came among them, and for some time afterwards. That fear, however, which was the effect of my ignorance, wore away as I began to know them. I could now speak English tolerably well, and I perfectly understood everything that was said. I now not only felt myself quite easy with these new countrymen, but relished their society and manners. I no longer looked upon them as spirits, but as men superior to use; and therefore, I had the strong desire to resemble them; to imbibe their spirit and imitate their manners; I therefore embraced every occasion of improvement and every new thing that I observed I reassured up in my memory” (Equiano 45-46).

 At the age of approximately 10, Olaudah Equiano was sold by slavers and taken to Virginia. His autobiography offers firsthand insight on the conditions of the Atlantic slave trade by an enslaved African, and the mindsets of enslaved peoples. This passage stuck out to me during my reading of Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, because of his sudden idolization of the European men around him, despite his previous fears about them. I think this passage demonstrates the psyche of enslaved, as well as, colonized people. Equiano explicitly states that he has a desire to “resemble” the European men, thus assimilating and becoming one of them. Life in enslavement is all Equiano had ever known at that point, he is impressionable and only sees and understands Western ideals, culture, and lifestyle to be superior of any other culture, because of the lifestyle he sees around him. It seems that Equiano believes that by adopting the norms and culture he sees around him; he’ll be able to be free like the European men who enslaved him. Equiano’s young, impressionable mind seems to have him convinced that Western European culture and ideology is superior than any other. At the same time, it is also telling that Equiano has developed ideas about people of different races, pitting them against each other and ranking them. It seems that Equiano sees that there is something wrong with himself, and thus wants to assimilate to be what he thinks is “better.” Despite writing his autobiography years after these events, Equiano is able to channel his childhood thoughts and feelings well. Equiano’s autobiography is a clear example in the dramatic effects enslavement and colonization has on the psyche of affected groups.

Something I often forget, or rather, lose sight of is how intertwined major parts of histories are with one another. The romantic period is often regarded as a great time of artistic, literary, and intellectual developments. At this time, there was an industrial revolution in Europe, the French revolution, and the Atlantic slave trade. Text written by enslaved Africans allow this part of history to live on and be remembered.

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WEEK 1: REFLECTING ON STILL CREEK AND WORDSWORTH

This is the first and only course I’ve ever had in university where I got to partake in fieldtrips/site studies, so as excited as I was, I was also nervous. I had no idea what to expect at each location and how on earth it was going to connect with our studies, the job was up to us to find the connections, and though difficult, I really enjoyed and appreciated each trip. As I learned from connecting with my peers in class, many of our interests with romantic literature began with Jane Austen’s works. That said, I entered this course with skepticism; I had never thought of connection romantic literature with settler place-making in Vancouver, nor did I see the connections, until we began our site studies.

Our first location was the hidden gem known as Still Creek. Despite being born and raised in the lower mainland, I’ve hardly begun to even explore my own city, and Still Creek was a place I never would have known about until this course. Something from this site study that struck me the most is the use of the word’s exotic and native, particularly the association with danger of the exotic, and purity of the native in relation to plants and how people are described. As mentioned in a previous post, I never paid much attention the foliage and nature around me. Thus, Professor Burgess’ knowledge of the flora around us was very fascinating to me. I never stopped to wonder what plants planted here were exotic or native to this land, and how they affected each other. For example, Himalayan blackberries and English ivy are two invasive and exotic species, brought here by British settlers. Their growth is choking out the native plants, and we can understand this relationship between the different types of plants as symbolic of the relation of settlers and Indigenous peoples; as these exotic plants are choking and killing the native plants and taking up their space on this land, practices of settler land use, did, and continue to the same. We see this in the way Indigenous land was forcefully taken by settlers, and repurposed, and Indigenous communities were pushed out of their homes and placed elsewhere. The complexity in our environment is quite profound; in such a beautiful hidden spot such as Still Creek, there is so much history and trauma layered deep in the flora. The presence of settler colonialism is all around us.

In relation to Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” I began to think about how surroundings invoke memory and symbolize different things. For the speaker in Wordsworth’s poem, daffodils symbolize happiness, but in thinking of the question, “what does Wordsworth’s poetry do for settlers?” I wonder if his work helped European settlers envision the perfect European landscape, and influenced the flora that Europeans brought with them to Vancouver during exploration. Knowing that daffodils are native to Europe, and seeing them grow in abundance in the spring throughout Vancouver and right outside my home, I am now constantly reminded of the effects of settler colonialism when I think of and look at the foreign daffodils planted in this land.

In conjunction with this idea of the settler imagination, I think the two contrasting photos echo the values and ideas of colonialism. I found the fencing and signage and interesting use of making land claims. Still Creek is a beautiful neighbourhood with a lovely trail, and yet while the trail felt so natural, and untouched, there is so much about it that is unnatural, through the park signage, and the foreign invasive plant species, the space is no longer as natural and free as we thought it was. 

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WEEK 1: “I wandered lonely as a cloud” 

The title and opening line of William Wordsworth’s poem, “I wandered lonely as a cloud” (line 1), provokes the imagery of a single cloud floating high up among the blue skies, and I never thought I would resonate so deeply with a poetic line personifying a cloud, until I read the words of Wordsworth. Picturing this image in my head, I could feel the distance of this single cloud, with the rest of the world, and those feelings of disconnection and emptiness. The speaker of the poem finds company with the abundance of daffodils they come across: “When all at once I saw a crowd, / A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the tress/ Fluttering and dancing the breeze” (lines 3-6). The personification of the daffodils here suggests that the speaker’s relationship with nature and the flora help aid his loneliness, and thus upon seeing them, he feels a great sense of joy and pleasure. In the final stanza, the speaker is presumedly back at home, as they state, “when on my couch I lie” (line 19), and imagines the dancing daffodils in times when “in pensive mood” (line 20). To be frank, I have never paid much attention to the nature surrounding me. To me, nature has always been the source of my allergies! Reading Wordsworth’s work has shown me a newfound appreciation for my surroundings, as he is able to find such beauty and solace in the most mundane of objects, like a field of daffodils. Upon first analysis of the poem, I understood it as a poem about the beauty of nature and human’s relationship with our natural environment. However, as I read the poem again and make edits to my reflections, I’ve begun to understand “I Wander Lonely as A Cloud,” as a poem finding comfort in our memories and imagination. The speaker of this poem has fond memories surrounding daffodils, and thus, in moments of needing comfort, the speaker imagines these daffodils as they associate daffodils with happiness. Wordsworth conveys an extremely human response, and these are actions I forget we do because of how human they are. We as humans, are constantly reflecting on our past memories because they remind us of how happy we were in those moments, and perhaps this is our human way of coping with, and the escaping the everchanging world.

Attached is a photo I found from google with the credited photographer’s watermark at the bottom. I really wanted to take my own photo for this one, but unfortunately we have been receiving a lot of rain and it was impossible to find a single, isolated cloud! That said, I think this photo really captures the loneliness Wordsworth is trying to convey. 

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Week 1: BEAUTY AND THE SUBLIME: THE BEGINNINGS OF MY JOURNEY WITH BRITISH ROMANTIC LITERATURE

 The beginning of my journey with British Romantic literature began with an introduction to William Wordsworth’s work, “Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey.” Having never read much British romanticism, I initially found his poem quite challenging to understand. I have always understood poetry as a complex set of words joint together to create profound and deep messages about life. Thus, upon initially reading “Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey,” I was stumped; where was the perplexing life lesson hidden amongst this blank verse poem about the beauty of the landscape Wordsworth was admiring?

The view that Wordsworth is writing about, is a spot he has not visited in 5 years: “Five years have past; five summers, with the length/ of five long winters! And again I hear” (lines 1-2). Wordsworth is returning to this spot after a long time has passed, and the emphasis of how much time has passed suggest that he is returning with new experiences and wisdom. These lines also set the tone for the poem, which is one that is deeply reflective. In the following lines of the first stanza, Wordsworth describes the landscape before him, one with deep, dark green foliage. Wordsworth spends the majority of this stanza describing the fruit trees, hedges, and other elements of flora in the area, but what strikes me in this stanza are the lines, “green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke/ Sent up, in silences, from among the trees!” (lines 17-18). The shift from descriptions of greenery to something artificially made such as smoke from burning coal, creates a sense of disturbance to the peaceful and serene area, as well as, a particular industrial change to the place itself. Published in 1798, in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, I can’t help but wonder if the mention of smoke is a metaphor for the industrialization of society and disruption to agricultural life and the natural environment. While Wordsworth seem to be taking in the beauty and admiring his surroundings, the solemn presence of his deep reflection conveys a sense of longing for something and loss. The immense love and admiration Wordsworth feels for this place is further telling of his desire to slow down time, focus, and take in the beauty of the nature around him, as he misses these simpler times as, “Nature never did betray” (line 123).

Upon reading and analyzing “Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey,” I have come to the conclusion that poetry does not always have to have a grand lesson at the end. Perhaps, the beauty of the British Romanticism genre, is the way in which writers and poets of this period observe and admire their surroundings simple for what they are. The complexity of this is taking a moment to focus on the beauty and the sublime of our natural environment, just as Wordsworth does here.

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Week 1: WHERE DO YOU KNOW KNOW FROM? 

In informing and guiding my own learning through this course, Eugenia Zuroski’s “Where do you know from?': An Exercise in Placing Ourselves Together in the Classroom," opened my eyes to the question of “where do you know from,” and how I position myself in this class when studying the texts, we read. I think it is important to situate ourselves and our learning based on the reflection of where and how our knowledge is informed. For myself, I am a Chinese-Malaysian Canadian settler of colour, who resides on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), sc̓əwaθenaɁɬ təməxʷ (Tsawwassen), Stz’uminus, and S’ólh Téméxw (Stó꞉lō) peoples. I was born and raised on this land, studied in the public Canadian education system, and I am a daughter to immigrant parents. When thinking about the question, “where are you from,” especially in the classroom, Zuroski’s article brought to light that this question has histories of anti-immigrant xenophobia. Instead, the question of “where do you know from,” allows us to reflect on how our identity shapes how we learn, and what we learn. Everyone’s identity informs their learning and knowledge in some way, and I think this is so powerful because it allows us to see many different perspectives and understand histories differently. I think this reflection is particularly important for the content of this class, as we will be mapping Vancouver, and exploring the history of British Romanticism, in conjunction with the histories of settler-colonialism in Vancouver.

Since one of the main goals of this course is to situate and contextualize Romantic-period literature in settler Vancouver, I wanted to look back upon my own exploration with literature and Vancouver. The first photo attached is probably the first photo of me reading a book! I discovered my love for literature from an early age, and my current book case still holds many of my favourite childhood books. The second photo is the first time my family visited Stanley Park. Stanley Park holds a very interesting and complicated Indigenous history. The reason my family and I went to Stanley Park that year was because my sister was actually participating in a school project called the Flat Stanley Project. I wish her flat Stanley was in the photograph, but a component of the project was to create their own mini me and explore your city and bring it along your summer explorations. In doing so, the goal of the project was to learn more of the area around you, and I think what we will be doing in this course is sort of reminiscent of that little elementary school project.