It wasn't a 'Rebellion' this day
It wasn’t a ‘Rebellion’ this day
When a grade 7 and 8 school bus group rolled into Pickering Museum Village from Toronto for their 1837 Farmer’s Rebellion day experience, little did I know I was the one going to be taught.
That spring day I worked alongside a semi-retired teacher volunteer, in activities the museum has arranged to show young teens about ‘the olden days.’ Students were here to learn about a period in Upper Canada history when change was in the air in its government. The students would experience the outdoor museum village and fresh air, backwoods trees, a river and heritage-period buildings… like a blacksmith shop and feel what life was like then.
Times may be different, but some things never change, only the setting!
Here are some of the olden day presentations we led the students through:
Simulating a town hall meeting in a church turned meeting place, students petition their government representatives to listen to their injustices. Their session before had reviewed the early 1800’s government a few years before Queen Victoria took the throne. It was a time when our British colony was falling into unrest. Students saw many of the tool implements used back then, like large logs to sit on, a heavy black cast iron kettle to set above a wood fire to boiling water for stews and soups, or even boil down maple sap to make syrup.
Students cut wood and felt raw satisfaction from doing hard physical work. The real lessons for me came as a result of observing the interaction of a teacher and students that day. The tussel within a person exiting childhood into maturity through the teen years can be expressed in different forms of rebellion. There are different ways of interpreting this transition, subtleties noticed by a trained teacher. The outing was a Canadian history lesson ripe for young teen understanding about the struggles of people in the past that references human character.
One such account:
William Lyon Mackenzie moves hundreds of farmers from the surrounding Toronto area to ‘march on York’ (Toronto) and their government for justice, but it all falls apart when they arrive at Montgomery Tavern. A Pickering man is sent to burn down the Don River Bridge to stop the King’s army return called back from Kingston. He will later hang outside the Toronto jail, where hundreds were imprisoned. Crammed jail cells give birth to unique artifacts of the rebellion: small wooden boxes carved by these prisoners to while away the time making boxes with poetry, love and dedications. The jail was relieved when hundreds of Ontario farm and town men were sent to Kingston Penitentiary. Some prisoners were even sent to the Australian penal colony across the world. Students pretended to be ‘Rebels with a Cause’ in this history lesson.
Not all students of today have wars to fight and may not recognize the sacrifice of these early generations. Inner struggles that form their characters, apprehension about the unknown, wondering how they will shape their world will be questions in their own rebellion or their own struggles. You could tell by their faces and actions that students saw parallels in their inner and outward struggles, an opportunity to grow and carve out a life as represented between past history and what students see in their present.
Some, however, seemed detached, while others eagerly involved themselves in the lessons. It was awesome to see how the teacher, (whom I was trying to show the ropes) skillfully got them engaged to involve and enlist their enthusiasm. You could tell she felt passionate about her role with a certain glow when she speaks with students. Experience grown out of years that made it look easy and seamless. It made me glad to see this spirit, especially since growing up in a city these days is not easy and takes a lot of courage, character and help to maneuver unscathed into adulthood.
One of the programs is a session where students pretend to put together a settler’s family wagon of goods with ropes, tools, supplies and people. Together students, museum staff and volunteers travel in our pretend wagon down to the river and into the woods to find an allotted piece of farm land. This history lesson usually becomes a lot of fun with jostling students, finally engaged, full of laughter and wild wonder in their young eyes. Most days this imagined step back in time is quick to organize and get going. Some students will pretend to be the wagon and contents and others will be the farmer and family.
We went through the student group assigning roles that day to organize the students. My ‘trainee,’ a semi-retired teacher with over 20 years, trained me. We were down to getting the last students into the imagined wagon, and a bigger boy moved gradually away from us, retreating to a wooden farm fence not wanting to participate. He did not want to get into the wagon. He apparently had not imagined the fun or his involvement. The teacher’s experience and keen eye had observed this behaviour before. Instead of chiding, she asked him where he wanted to be? She found out he wanted to be a wheel outside the wagon.
The whole scene went by in a blink, handled cleverly and without incident by the museum educator training with me. She motivated other students to help rather than taunt this almost non-participant. Everyone had a good time, and I feel many of the students took away lessons and parallels they can use in their everyday life, even in today’s automated world.
Time does not lessen the need for patience, understanding, and a helping hand from your peers with a little experience. So, it wasn’t a rebellion that day, it was a learning step along the road of life.
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