Thursday, March 3, 2011



Older Research Notes

Sir John A Macdonald

  • First Prime Minister of Canada
  • 1815-1891
  • Came into politics in Kingston in 1844
  • Elected to conservative party
  • Had bad drinking problem
  • Took on projects such as railroad after confederation
  • Experienced a lot of loss in life
  • Father of Confederation

Resources:

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/sir-john-a-macdonald/023013-1000-e.html

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/sir-john-a-macdonald/023013-2000-e.html

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/sir-john-a-macdonald/023013-3000-e.html

D’Arcy McGee

  • Born in Ireland in April 1825
  • First emigrated to U.S at age 17
  • Started a newspaper in Boston (Boston Pilot)
  • Got into some trouble over his radical ideas in the States
  • In 1857 moved to Montreal and Started Paper there
  • His skills in rhetoric landed him in the Canadian Parliament
  • Advocated and influenced greatly the Colonies coming together
  • Shot one early morning on Sparks Street
  • D’Arcy McGee’s assassination (April 7, 1868)-McGee was father of confederation and had anti-Fenian views/did not want secret societies to undermine government
  • Patrick Whelan accused as assassinator

Resources:

http://www.mysteriesofcanada.com/Canada/thomas_d.htm

http://www.cbc.ca/history/EPCONTENTSE1EP9CH1PA2LE.html

Patrick Whelan/Carleton County Gaol

  • Convicted in assassination of D’Arcy McGee
  • Alleged Fenian although Never Proven
  • Many doubt that Whelan was killer
  • 11 February, 1869 hung at Carleton County Gaol but always said he was innocent
  • Gaol opened in 1842 on land given by Nicholas Sparks (landowner) who created Sparks Street where McGee was killed

Resources:

http://www.cbc.ca/history/EPCONTENTSE1EP9CH1PA2LE.html

http://www.carletoncountygaol.com/content/history/inmate.shtml

http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=4714

http://www.carletoncountygaol.com/content/history/history.shtml

George Brown

  • Canadian Politician Born 1818. Died 1880-Father of Confederation
  • Created newspaper Globe and was editor
  • “Leader” of Liberal Party
  • Helped to write resolutions for what came to be British North America Act
  • Lead Liberal Party in 1867 election but most of the “reformers” who had fought for confederation were now with the conservatives
  • Lost and left politics in October that year
  • Stayed with newspaper
  • March 25 1880 George Bennet (a Globe employee) tried to kill him because he was angry
  • Brown pushed his hand down but pistol shot him in leg-died weeks later of gangrene May 9th

Resources:

http://torontoist.com/2009/05/historicist_the_death_of_george_bro.php

http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?BioId=38983

Liberal Party

Resources:

http://www.liberal.ca/party/history/

http://www.liberal.ca/pdf/docs/070417_lpc_history_en.pdf

Lester B. Pearson

  • Born in Toronto April 1897
  • Went to University of Toronto
  • Commissioned in 1916 and joined the Royal Flying Corps where he was injured twice and had to spend the rest of the war training other flyers
  • Moved up in Canadian and international politics throughout the years
  • He wrote the speech that was made proposing NATO in 1949 and in 1952 was president of the UN General Assembly during the Korean War
  • When the French and British were against Egypt in the Suez Crisis he came up with the idea of the first UN security force to prevent another war
  • After Prime Minister St. Laurent left the Liberals he became party leader when Diefenbaker was prime minister
  • In 1963 the liberals came to power with a minority government
  • In 1967 Pearson lit the centennial flame-a time of unity for Canadians
  • Quote: “The choice, however, is as clear now for nations as it was once for the individual: peace or extinction.”

Resources:

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/2/4/h4-3356-e.html

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1957/pearson-bio.html

http://www.quotesandpoem.com/quotes/listquotes/author/lester-b.-pearson

Centennial Flame

  • 1st January 1967 to commemorate Canada`s 100th Birthday-Lester B Pearson lit the flame
  • Represents Canada`s unity-represents all of Canada
  • Each “Shield” for each province around flame has year they joined Canada
  • People toss coins into fountain where flame is located
  • There was an act passed in 1991-that says the coins tossed in go to fund research for disabled Canadians

Resources:

http://www.parliamenthill.gc.ca/histoire-history/terrains-grounds/flmm-flm-eng.html

Peace Tower

  • On one side of Centennial Flame
  • Built to remember those Canadians who died in the First World War
  • Replaced Victoria Tower on Centre Block of Parliament

Resources:

http://www.parliamenthill.gc.ca/histoire-history/tour-tower-eng.html

Queen’s Gate

  • “Entrance” to Parliament-1876 they were finished

Resources:

http://www.collineduparlement-parliamenthill.gc.ca/histoire-history/1859-1916-eng.html

Canada in the Great War (WWI)

  • Canada entered Great War in 1914 automatically when Britain did because we were not fully independent
  • Canada barely had 3000 troops when they entered the war but by the end 600 000 troops were in Canada’s forces
  • Famous battles were The Somme, Vimy Ridge (Canada’s day of victory), and the Third Battle of Ypres
  • Vimy Ridge is known as Canada’s moment the day we were unified as a nation
  • Around 66 000 troops were killed in the horrors of Trench warfare

Resources:

http://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/exhibitions/guerre/home-e.aspx

http://wwii.ca/content-8/world-war-i/facts-and-information/

http://wwii.ca/content-40/world-war-i/canada-enters-the-war/

Sir Robert Borden

  • Prime Minister during first World War and during Great Fire of February 2 1916 when Centre Block of Parliament burnt down
  • Recognised Canada as a sovereign nation and that we need our independence
  • Born in 1854 spent many years building up the Conservatives
  • Saw the horrors first Hand of the First World War and organized a nations resources and soldiers to the war effort
  • Conscription 1917 divided the country and Borden’s cabinet was divided too with many French not in favour of it
  • Fought for Canada’s place in the Paris Peace Conference
  • Left office in 1920; Died in 1937

Resources:

http://www.parliamenthill.gc.ca/histoire-history/1916-eng.html

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/2/4/h4-3206-e.html

Thursday, December 2, 2010

December 3

Since the last post, our group has accomplished a lot with regards to research and locating prospective places to put in our project. Also, we have decided on a more concise direction to proceed with on our project. I have been doing more research about buildings and monuments on Ottawa and looking at what could be potentially used in our project. I also looked at some apps that we could possibly model our game after. After looking through a few, I have seen a few examples of what works well and what does not. This will help us in the development of our project.

-Morgan

3 December (Rob)

Since my last post we have achieved a lot in the research section of our project. I reached the deadline for my first task and by that I managed to finalise the draft research notes and add appropriate sources to each definition and point. There is still more room for improvement on the research but we have a great point to work from. We also discussed gathering a list of places we need for the GPS to get started on that and a list of historic places has been writen up.

The next step would be to go and plot the points at those spots. Bearing in mind that these are just initial places. There is definitely room for more discussion and to possibly add more minor places as right now the places have seen major historical events. This would add more to the project but for now the task at hand is getting the major places done.

Friday, November 19, 2010

19 Movember

My job over the past week or so had been to look around online to check out our options for things like a mobile website for people, as well as a template for a forum of some kind that our players can use to discuss the game.

In other words, things are still developing; we keep changing the finer details of our project, trying to find something that we really like, but work is progressing overall at a pretty decent rate

Thursday, November 18, 2010

November 19th

Like Simon I've been really busy with my other courses, as well as working just about every possible minute I'm not in class due to some big sale at my work. We talked over some more ideas regarding platforms for the technology, also the "People Are Places Are People" sparked some interesting thoughts about how to use riddles in the game. I plan to do some work into plot narratives to drive the player forward through the game.