Young writers leap to Canada 150 challenge
TODAY’S WEEKEND SECTION HAS THE TOP 5 FINALISTS’ ESSAYS, BUT MORE CAN BE FOUND ON THE STARPHOENIX AND LEADER-POST WEBSITES.
Reading student essays for the Leader-Post/StarPhoenix Canada 150 contest led to a sticky situation. Turns out, there was a load of maple syrup involved.
There was also a pile of poutine, a ton of Tim Hortons and a huge amount of hockey. But most of all, I found an inspiring degree of imagination.
The contest had students in grades 8-12 across the province writing essays on one of three topics:
Imagine the ultimate Canadian ■ action hero and describe one of his or her adventures.
How do you imagine Canada
■ will look in 150 years?
Write about a time when you
■ were proud to be Canadian. What made you proud and what made you feel especially Canadian?
The action hero topic was enthusiastically embraced by writers and had me laughing with delight at times.
The names of the heroes are visionary. Who wouldn’t want to read stories about the Northern Knight, Wild Woman, the Poutinator and a sidekick beaver named Gretzky?
Thanks to author Morgan Gardner, I got to meet Walking Eagle and his sidekick Smudge Pan. Walking Eagle, who gets around in a Lamborghini because he is “just too fat to fly” fights the villain Flying Bannock on the Ille a La Crosse First Nation. Using hockey sticks and pucks, they foil a bank robbery and help the police.
A villain named the Racist Rodent was memorable for me. First, I love it that the character’s creator, Brooklyn Tinker, sees racism as a crime in the same vein as bank robbery and attempting world domination. And Tinker had a wonderfully understated — and very Canadian — way of describing his dastardly deeds.
“On their way home they are forced to listen to the racist comments from the rodent, which was very uncalled for.”
A couple of essays focused on a future scarcity of jobs and food due to allowing immigrants into the country.
I was dismayed to see students express those kinds of fears, and it serves as a reminder on Canada’s 150th birthday that we still have a distance to go in ensuring multiculturalism is celebrated and differences are not feared. I was encouraged by other essays that expressed opposite views, like this one from Sierra Gaillard who wrote, “When our country proudly opened the doors to Syrian refugees, I truly felt Canadian.”
Thanks to the generous partnership the newspapers had with both the University of Regina and University of Saskatchewan, the top prizes were $1,000, $500 and $250. We hope this will help the writers as they consider postsecondary education.
Yann Martel lived up to his stellar reputation as a community booster by agreeing to act as a judge. I’m sure it means a great deal to the young writers to know someone with an international reputation read their work. The teachers who encouraged — and straight up assigned — student writers to enter deserve some applause for their efforts.