The Grade 8 class at St. Augustine School in Humboldt has entered a competition put forth by Parks Canada, and they need your vote.
The competition for a four-day excursion to Banff National Park was opened for Grade 8 classes across the country to submit a three-minute video recreating a significant Canadian moment related to a national historical site.
Chad Knaus, the Grade 8 teacher at the school, says his students have worked very hard at recreating the historical march up the Chilkoot Pass - the trail many gold prospectors utilized to get to Dawson City, Yukon. The rugged nature of the Chilkoot Trail illustrates the challenge, anticipation, and danger that confronted men and women of the Klondike Gold Rush in 1898.
"We went out to Mt. Carmel, and the whole intention was to use the space to recreate the trail," Knaus said. "But we had to wait until we had that big snowfall a few weeks ago to be able to do it."
It has been a project that has taught the students many things, especially about the physical challenges people had to endure in those days.
"Our experience, we found it hard," said Grade 8 student Robyn Lopinski. "We imagined how hard it would have been for them, and the journey and the hardships that the people had to go through."
Lopinski and fellow classmate Brayden Kiefer explained that they learned about the Chilkoot Trail and the Gold Rush before Christmas, in English Language Arts. As a class, they decided to use that as the basis for the video competition, with the trip to Banff being an added motivation.
"The trip was definitely a motivation," Brayden said. "I've been to Banff before, and it would be amazing to go there again."
Both students said the class couldn't have done it without the help of their teacher.
"Mr. Knaus was a big help for us," Lopinski said. "He did all our videotaping for us, and then the script - he helped us with that too."
From the 25 or 30 minutes of film Knaus shot, it had to be edited down to three minutes. Then, Knaus says, the class wrote the script together, and he had a couple of students work on it to come up with the final project.
There is even an original music score, written by Aiden Wickenhauser, the school's band teacher's son.
"It all had to be original creation," added Knaus. "We couldn't have any kind of music that was already published."
The Grade 8 class's video, Chilkoot Challenge, is posted on the website www.myparkspass.ca, along with all the other videos that are entered in the competition. From now until February 24, people are allowed to vote for their favourite video - one vote per person per day. Each vote will increase the chance for their video to make it into the top 10.
