Historica Canada Education Portal

This lesson plan is based on viewing the Footprints videos for Lionel Conacher, Harry Jerome and Wayne Gretzky. Heroes are not made; they are born, and Canada has its own distinct breed. The athletes in this series are national heroes, not so much for how they transformed their respective sports (great athleticism is not synonymous with heroism), but for how they reshaped the Canadian landscape from a disjointed collection of communities into a people with a common history and...

This lesson plan is based around several Footprints videos: Normie Kwong, Russ Jackson, Ron Lancaster and Angelo Mosca. Watch the minutes with your students prior to conducting the activities. 

The first Grey Cup game was played on a cold, blustery day in December 1909. The 1950 Grey Cup - The Mud Bowl - was such a mess that at one point a referee mistakenly thought a Winnipeg player was drowning in a puddle. Toronto's Exhibition Stadium was host to the 1962 Fog Bowl, a Grey Cup...

This lesson plan is based on viewing the Footprint videos for the Edmonton Grads, Montreal Expos, Toronto Blue Jays and the World Series Championships, and the 1976 Canada Cup Team. The Edmonton Grads' astonishing record ended when they disbanded at the beginning of the Second World War. The conflict between East and West was as cold on the ice as off during the 1976 Canada Cup. The Toronto Blue Jay victory at the World Series helped to subdue ever-present concerns of American...

This lesson plan is based on viewing the Footprint videos Torchy Peden, Whipper Billy Watson, Jack Kent Cooke, Northern Dancer, Sandy Hawley, The Calgary Stampede, Jack Bionda, Jimmy McLarnin, and George Chuvalo. Their names do not suggest athletic prowess: Washerwoman, Northern Dancer, The Baby-faced Assassin, Whipper, the unwealthiest millionaire, Torchy, Cowtown Stampede. But the moniker of these athletes and one sporting event are characteristically Canadian — apparent feebleness...

This lesson plan is based on viewing the Footprints videos for George Seymour Lyon, Marlene Stewart-Streit, Moe Norman,Sandra Post, and George Knudson. Canada, it has been said, is Scotland's revenge on England. Scottish immigrants formed the backbone of the nation's fur trade more than 200 years ago and our first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald was also Scottish. Yet we have tended to forget the diversity of our earlier immigrants and the variety of our sporting history. Golf...

This lesson plan is based on viewing the Footprint videos for Barbara Ann Scott, the Jelineks, and Petra Burka. Artistry or athleticism? The one has been the doppelganger of the other throughout the history of figure skating. Can a sport that judges athletic performance as a creative expression be a sport at all?

To increase student consciousness of the history of Canadian success in figure skating; to increase student appreciation for the pioneers of figure skating in Canada; to...

This lesson plan is based on viewing the Footprint videos, The Brier and Eddie Werenich. In Saskatchewan writer W.O Mitchell’s novel, The Black Bonspiel of Willie MacCrimmon, the main character says, "You could say curling is as much for the spirit as for the flesh." Such is the feeling for a game consisting of a flat icy surface and coloured rocks. This competitive spirit has infused Brier champions like Eddie Werenich. The game may be frustratingly tedious to some, but there is no...

This lesson plan will introduce students to Canada's political history and investigate how former Prime Ministers have influenced Canada's present.

Students will learn proper research skills, including note taking and documentation of sources.
Students will learn about Canada's political system by researching one of Canada's Prime Ministers.
Students will learn how our past, including the problems that plagued previous governments and the decisions that were made, have affected our...