Blossom On The Road! By Eleanor, Miranda and Sophia

Part 1: Sophia

On Wednesdays, our families do home school swaps, where either Sophia and Eleanor go over to Miranda's house, or Miranda goes over to Sophia and Eleanor's house, and we do home school! We call ourselves BLOSSOM.

Last weekend, we went on a road trip to Victoria as a field trip all together in Miranda's family's Westfalia van. It was a fantastic trip accompanied by awesome playlists and car breakdowns!

Us in the broken-down van, fretting our future.

But then, we drove into the parking lot of a local Dairy Queen and one of the employees fixed our van for us!

Luckily Miranda is an artist and brings supplies with her everywhere she goes - so here we are making emergency Thank You cards for the man who fixed our van!

After our van was fixed, our Granny and Papa arrived and treated us to lunch at the Dairy Queen.

First Stop: Royal BC Museum - Actually learning something! 

(Just kidding, I learned that Miranda is awesome and brings art supplies with her everywhere, and that it is a true fact that strangers are friends you haven't met yet.)

After the DQ adventure we went to the Royal BC Museum, where we first went into the Human History Exhibit.

First we saw a bunch of exhibits about lost languages of the First Nations people from BC. British Columbia has 64 First Nations first languages and BC has 80% of all the first nations languages in Canada. Unfortunately, at residential schools, children were made to learn English and stop speaking or forget their mother tongues.

(Eleanor's note: "I have been studying communities and I think losing your language would be like losing your life. If the grandparents and parents who always taught the kids lost the kids and when the kids came back they couldn't understand them any more it would be heart breaking. if was a mama and my kid got sent away and my kids came back and I started speaking my language to my kids and they didn't know my language, it would break my heart. And that happened! That really happened! people! Have a heart!")

Listening to the language of the Tahltan, the people our church is connected with.

Language board of BC

My favourite bit of this exhibit was a giant woven basket called the Cradle of Language. You could sit in it and listen to old recordings of lost First Nations languages. You can see a video of us in the Cradle of Language by clicking HERE.

A beautiful baby carrier.

One of the TRC calls to action

Then we went into a First Nations gallery and posted all over the gallery were the 94 Calls to Action issued by the Truth and Reconciliation commission. It was entrancing and inspiring to see the roots of our country's history.

This was us panning for gold, super cool for Miranda who is studying BC Gold Rush history in Grade 5 Social Studies!

We went to the western bit of the Human History gallery. We saw a Gold Rush exhibit, a pretend marine ship and a pretend town with a movie theatre with old Charlie Chaplin movies I got sucked into and loved watching.

We met Shrimpy the shrimp.

We named this wooly mammoth George. Talk about extreme environments!

Then we went into the Natural History exhibit where we looked at lots of nature - such as wooly mammoths with real ice walls, tidal pools by sea lion exhibits, and a pretend submarine filled with aquatic artifacts including a ninja crab - which was helpful as I'm learning about exploring extreme environments - like in the deep ocean!

Ninja Crab!

I loved coming here, it was fun and memorable experience, but I wish I had gotten the moccasins I saw in the gift shop! Sophia, signing off.

Pretend submarine!

 Part 2: Goldstream Provincial Park by Miranda

On Monday morning Granny and Papa took us on a hike at Goldstream Park. It was called Goldstream Park because that was where explorers found gold a long time ago during the Gold Rush. Granny and Papa told us that some people still come and pan for gold in the river.

Granny is teaching us about the salmon life cycle. The Goldstream river is where you can come and see the salmon somehow returning from the ocean to their birthplace! Scientists still don't really know how the salmon do it!

Learning about the Goldstream river.

Here we were looking at different flowers to see if we could match them up to the flower book back at their house.

Here we are at Goldstream Falls. Sophia was making her own waterfall by moving rocks and putting rocks in different places.

There were 195 steps! (I think!)

I really liked how Granny and Papa took us to an awesome playground at the park, and I really liked seeing the waterfall too. We pretended we were forest adventurers and we went down the stream and found different things. I really liked looking at the Goldstream river and I saw tiny little glints of gold-looking stuff. I loved it!

I learned a lot about the forest this time. This time I stopped and looked around and saw different things I had never seen before. I loved learning all the things about the river too, that I never knew before. Granny is a really good teacher! I loved it!

I'm going to hand things over to Eleanor now and she is going to tell you all about our visit to the Provincial legislature buildings, but I just wanted to say that the people who worked there were really nice to Todelo and Ittle, my and Eleanor's favourite stuffies. Here they are below, tucked in our shirts ready to go in! When we went into the legislature buildings we all had to go through a security check point and we all had to put our loose items into a bucket to be x-rayed. We had to put Ittle and Todelo in too! The security guards were really nice about it. We had to give our stuffies to security when we went in to the legislative assembly viewing gallery.

Part 3: The BC Provincial Legislature Buildings (aka BC Parliament)

 Just before we went in to the BC Leg for a tour, we met Queen Victoria! (I loved her crown.) I think they had an actress playing Queen Victoria because it was almost Victoria Day and also we were in Victoria!

Queen Victoria told us where she comes from they don't smile in pictures, but we were so excited it was hard not to smile!

On our tour we saw this quilt which was a quilt made by the families of First Nations women who were missing or were murdered. Some of the squares were made out of their clothes and possessions.  I thought it was just terrible that they were missing or murdered. The world should not be like that.

This is Mary Ellen Smith. (An actress playing her.)

 We learned about Mary Ellen Smith. She was the first women in all of the BC Legislature. When she was elected women used to not be considered PERSONS under the law. They gave birth to persons, they raised persons, but they were not persons! She got elected before women were considered persons under the law! When I heard this speech, it made me feel like women can really do anything!

This is beauty. Admire it. They made this building so beautiful to show our amazing country and where we live. It shows how beautiful it ca be.

When my Mum asked Sophia why they made the buildings so beautiful, she said: "Because this is where they decide our future." I think the government wants our future to be bright and beautiful.

We went on a tour of the buildings and we sat in the viewing gallery and watched a bit of the debate. A lot of the members weren't there so it was not that exciting. They were talking about families, though.

And then..... Miranda's MLA in her riding, Mabel Elmore, called us AND ASKED US IF WE WERE STILL THERE. She came out and asked us if we would like to come back into the parliament buildings and have a private tour! She took us all around the places we didn't go on the regular tour. 

This was a viewing room where people were typing out the words from the debate in the assembly to silent TVs and sending all the TV signals to TV stations. They were also typing down everything that got said for records.

We loved going into the MLA's bathroom, it wasn't exactly fancy but it was really old and kind of nice, but the Queen might have sat on the toilet I sat on. Sometimes people call toilets "thrones", so I could say I sat on the Queen's royal throne!

We went to the library. The public could actually take out books there!

There were no children's books, but there was one comic book, an Archie comic book.

Betty and Veronica visited Victoria!

Ms. Elmore gave us awesome badges. We got them for our Girl Guide blankets! One says "Government Girls" and one has the BC crest. (Just like the one we're standing in front of in this picture.

One of the interesting things we learned on this tour was what the BC Coat of Arms is supposed to look like and how there are so many wrong coat of arms around the legislature buildings, ones where the big horn sheep's tongue is sticking out, or ones where the sun is setting on the British Empire and don't even tell me about the Lion without the dogwood necklace!

We were so excited! We just completed half of the best day of our lives!

Here I am standing in front of Queen Victoria. it is actually supposed to be facing towards the leg, but they faced it the other way, so then Her Majesty could look out to the harbour.

Here we are sitting with George, a statue at the Navy memorial where my grandparents have a stone.

Here is a beautiful scene taken from beside the Milestones looking out onto the harbour and you can see in the middle of the night a big glowing building, it looks os beautiful doesn't it?

This is Sophia looking at yet another coat of arms!

This is Ruby! Finally it was after 10 o'clock at night and we said goodnight to all the carriage horses one their way to the stables for bed.

Our trip to Victoria was amazing, it couldn't have been better! We all want to go back as soon as possible. Thanks for listening!

Here we are today, writing our thank you letters to Mabel Elmore!

Fourth Of July Fun! by Eleanor

I am back again, again! I have read "Bo At Ballard Creek" for the second time. It was very fun. 

My favourite chapter is called "The Fourth Of July." The main character in the book is Bo. her family isn't a family like your regular old family, she has two Daddys who she calls Papa and Papa. They're not a gay family, Jack and Arvid are work partners who work together and decided to raise Bo together. Bo's mommy walked away, kind of like a turtle who walks away from her turtle babies or turtle eggs.

The book is set in Alaska after the gold rush, in the late 1920's. They always have bannock and donuts on the Fourth of July, because the 4th of July is America's birthday. Yay, America! The whole town used to make the celebration happen. There was no committee or anything that would bring the food, everybody brought their share. They brought their share, they got their share! Bo's Papa Jack was great cook and he used to make 400 donuts and bring them in a wheel barrow!

We made donuts and bannock with my Dad. it was great fun, but my Dad accidentally deleted all the pictures. Just imagine the pictures of me and my Mum and Dad and Sophia and Amy cooking bannock over a campfire. We made bannock like the picture above here. This is how you make bannock, first you make the dough and if you want to put in different flavours you add things. we made berry bannock, fancy cheese and rosemary bannock and regular bannock. The reason they had bannock is because there was a large Inuit community in Ballard Creek. 

We twisted it into ropes, and wrapped it around sticks like the picture above, and we cooked it over a fire.  I loved it! Then we also made donuts and it was really fun, but our house STANK from the smell of the hot fat (or lard) we cooked them in.

We made little circles with cups out of dough and poked our fingers through to make holes and then our Daddy plopped them in the hot lard. You had to get the oil at just the right temperature, so the outside didn't burn but the inside was still cooked. The first few donuts weren't perfect but they were edible, and delicious.  The amazing scientific thing that happened was that the dough was so flat at first, and all of a sudden, POOF! it was nice and thick. The donuts would also start to float when they were ready to turn over. After they were cooked we let them dry for a while and then we put them in a paper bag of powdered sugar and shook them up so they were covered in powdered sugar. (I honestly liked them better without the sugar.)

Thank you for listening, I suggest making donuts and bannock yourself, and reading this book. They are very good! Bye!

Girl Guides Badge: "Heritage" by Sophia

• For my heritage badge I was asked to show I knew about several generations of my family thus the resoning for this family tree.

• I was also asked: How did you get your name? Find out the meaning of your first, middle or family name. If you could pick your own first name, what would it be? Why? What is a birthstone? Which one is yours?

My name is Sophia Joanna Jubilee Pallister. Sophia means wisdom, Joanna means God is gracious, and Jubilee means celebratory freedom. My mum named me Sophia because it was her favourite name. The reason why my Mum's first name is my second name is because my Mum's side of the family has a naming tradition where the first born son/daughter of the family has their second name be the Mum or Dad's first name. I am called Jubilee because in the bible, every seven years there was a year of rest, where nobody would do their hard, everyday work and every slave was set free and debts were forgiven, and the entire year was one huge party. My parents named me this because I was the 7th grandchild on my mum's side, I was born in my parent's 7th year of marriage, and I was born on August 27th.
If I could choose my own first name it would be either Ever or Kei (pronounced kee).
This is because I think these names are rare, and unique. Just like me. And a birthstone is a mineral or gem representing the month of your birth. I was born in August, so my birthstone is the peridot, witch is a light green gem. 

• I was asked to: Make a toy, cook a special dish or learn a game, song or dance that your ancestors might have enjoyed.

I made trifle, an English dish with my Granny, that she makes every year at Christmas. It mostly consist of cake, jello, and fruit, whipping cream, custard and sprinkles. She makes a different way from my auntie. It used to be a dish to use up all the leftover dessert ingredients, but now we do it as a family tradition. 

• Visit or find out about a National Park or National Historic site. Explain why it was created and how it is used today.

Me and Eleanor went to Fort Langley, a national history site that was the place BC was founded.In 1923, the Canadian government designated Fort Langley as a National Historic Site and erected a commemorative plaque near the storehouse. At this time, the site consisted only of the one building and 1-acre (4,000 m2) of land. From 1931 to 1956, the Native Sons and Daughters of British Columbia operated a museum out of the storehouse. Parks Canada took control of the site in 1955, and a joint Federal-Provincial program reconstructed three buildings in time for the centennial of the founding of British Columbia in 1958. In 1978, the site became a national historic park, and has consisted of 8.5 hectares (21 acres) since 1985.

• Read and aboriginal story (First nations, Metis or Inuit)

I have read two aboriginal stories so far: How Raven Stole The Sun & The Legend Of Lightning And Thunder.

• Discover a Canadian who has contributed to Canadian culture in the past or present. Create a story, song or poem about this Canadian.

I wrote this haiku about Bill Reid:

Just look at a log

Think about what it could be

Art in the making

• Visit a museum, historical society, historic building, cemetery or town hall to learn more about your heritage.

It's kind of hard to go somewhere to learn about my personal heritage because i'm mostly british so instead I learned about what aboriginal life was like.

Brownie Badge: Aboriginal Peoples Of Canada by Eleanor

The name of some of the First Nations people who used to live near our home (and some still do) are the Musqueum, Coast Salish, Kwakwaka'wakw and the Haida people.

The name of an aboriginal folk tale was How raven Stole the Sun and Canibal.

This is me at a visit to the UBC Museum of Anthropology. I was sketching a picture of this statue. 

This is a bear statue and it was carved by Bill Reid. He is a famous wood carver from the Haida people. It is a bear. And in Haida culture a bear is almost like a human and they treat bears like a very special guest and if they kill a bear they sprinkle eagle feathers on it to show, like, respect! honour! we like this bear!

This is my drawing of the Bill Reid carving "Bear".

I  have used an Aboriginal invention, it is the toboggan. Amazing, Invention! Love it! Amazing for snow.

The Aboriginal game I like, doesn't have a name that I know. You have to crouch down in a squat and you do that with a bunch of other people, and you sing an Aboriginal song, if you don't know one just go, "ahhh nay nay nooo" or something, and the point of it is just for fun, and what happens is you jump on your toes while you sing the song and stay squatting, and the point is that you want to be the last person still squatting and if you fall over, you're out. Sorry, kid, you're out.