On November 25th of 2011 which falled on a Friday, was the day where the grade 9 students of 9I and 9E went on their class trip to Little India!

The main focus for being on this trip was too learn about the aspects of the community, by doing so, our teachers had assigned us to go up to shop keepers and store clearks with the groups we were placed in, and interview the foreigner folk about their life in Canada changed their life and why they had choosed moved here. We were also told to take pictures of things we see along the way. Mr. Brickel or mr. Berkett, depending on who’s class you were in, handed each group a voice recorder and off we went, down our seperate ways.

Walking in the streets of little India I pass by several pedestrians along the way. I cared to notice that it was quite the diverse community, this had came across highly unexpected and shocking to me and im sure to others aswell, because when you hear the words “Little India” you’d expect to find a ‘little’ community of the Indian race, but was found to be an inaccurate assumption.

We had about half an hour to go to different locations and have our interviews with some of the locals before we were to dine at the restaurants our classes were directed to go to. The questions being asked were mostly “Why did you choose to move here to Canada ?” more specifically, “Why choose Toronto ?”, beginning with a simple ” Hi how are you? ” and following with a, ” we are from The York School, can we interview you for a school assignment on your immigration to Canada and the aspects of your community? this will only take a few minutes of your time.” Some of the locals weren’t too pleased with the attention of us tourists and the fact that we were questioning and being personal even though we were polite, and respectful of their shops. Others, were satisfied to find that we took an interest in what they had to say, about their religious values, beliefs, their culture and their immigration to Canada.

We had a fabulous lunch with our class full of wonderful dishes that were unfamiliar to us and uncertainty as to wether we should try or not, but were absolutely delightful once eaten. After we ate lunch with the our ‘ gang ‘  we were able to go out with our friends and hang around the streets of Little India, snapping shots of what we found to represent the community so that we could add more photos to the share space drive so we could all access the pictures we took on our adventure out, so each person could put together a photo essay for our individual assignments.

- Shanelle D

We, proud Torontonians, all know that the rest of our home and native land – Canada, feels a great deal of pleasure when it comes to hating on us because ‘we’ the city of Toronto believes that ‘we are’ the center of the universe – false – this is because, we have been surveyed and It was shown that most Torontonians believe that NYC is what we call “The center of the universe”; although Canada’s assumption about Toronto is false it is however true that we are quite the concieded city, but besides that fact, we can’t stop to wonder why would they care that much to hate on us. Looking deep into the story, ” Why do people love to hate the city of Toronto?” I look at all sorts of possible perspectives and some of the most obvious angles to find answers that piece the puzzle together, by looking from the citizens of Canada who live outside Toronto’s point of view; this helped me come up with a well thought out explination for our Canadian people’s behaviour towards the successful city of Toronto and its remarkable Torontorians- must I say so myself. When the rest of Canada thinks of Toronto, they refer us to those ‘ urban city folks ‘ who live very fast paced lives unlike themselves. They believe that to live steady, simple and ordinary life is the right way to live. Another hated thing about Toronto is that, we are the most populous region in Canada, because of the various job opportunities we have to offer making it easy for the many new comers that have flooded our city repeatedly throughout the years that need to find a job. The many people outside of our hometown feel the need to put us down because, not only are we in a great economic standing, but the most part of canada’s media revolves around us and we get special treatment so to speak. Over years there has been immigrants who have migrated from exotic places, and others much different from ours. Living in Toronto from all of the other places you could possibly choose to live around Canada, has made it easier for everybody to fit in and unite whether you are African-american, Asian, White, Jewish, Middle eastern, there is a place for you.  What most immigrants find most appealing about Toronto is that we allow any belief to be practiced within our city, meaning there is no exclusion what-so-ever, making everybody feel like they belong and that their religious rights, values and beliefs are accepted. Canadians aren’t very open to a multicultural society, so by that Toronto may come across as a trader to the rest of our country meaning that they believe that we are more, ‘American’ than Canadian. Canadians claim that Toronto is very dangerous, although our crime rate is not nearly as close to as much as Guelph and Quebec city.As you can see, there are so many advantages to living in Toronto that the other parts of Canada don’t have the benefit of. So why does rest of Canada have hatred towards us? because, they envy what they cannot provide for their citizens.

-shanelle dejanovic

Summery of our journey:

Last Friday morning, the grade nine classes were paired up with their story map groups from the first week of school at the grade 9 orientation at camp Ooch, and were also paired with their grade 11 or 12 supervisors for the Amazing Race. We were given a hint as to where we were supposed to go to find are next clue, and off we went. Then the race continued on, and each group went there separate ways. From the morning through 3:00pm, we were running around Toronto snapping shots of our locations, and off to finding our next clues. By the end we were drained from all of our energy.

My Group’s highlights :

Group members : Trevor O’leary, Ella Avanessian,and our Grade 12 supervisor, Hannah Grover.

On our second clue as to where we would find Mr. Brickell, we were asked to find the king of Kensington. While we were on our search around Kensington market, we eventually found Mr. Brickell in a park in Kensington market. When we found him, we were asked to write a lymric about Toronto, and when we were  finished we had to ask a person to read it aloud with us while Mr. Brickell was filming. We asked a mother of a three year old daughter named Kegan, who had a broken arm, to read the lymric along with us, and the mother had asked us if her little daughter could read along to.

When we went to U of T for one of our clues we were asked to do a few activities, but the one that had me laughing every time ( you had to be there to think it was funny ) I would think of it was when, we had to ask the half of the U of T’s student body to play hopscotch with us and we were turned down every time, some of the time we had people considering the idea, but we were rejected once they discovered that we were going to film them doing the assigned activity. We had this one girl who forgot how to play hopscotch and then we had these two girls who were absolutely terrible at playing the game – not to be critical or anything; even when they were going awfully slow one of the girls phone broke, just as she was saying how she broke her new iphone twice in that same day.

Dawson’s creek star, Joshua Jackson, plays the role of a failed novelist who went on to the becoming of a grade school teacher, Ben Tyler, who learns that he is diagnosed with cancer and is already at stage four; his last and final stage, meaning that even with treatment his survival rate is down by 90%. He has been told by his doctor that he has a very limited amount of time left to live; a year or two, a month or maybe even one week. After hearing the dreadful news, a flash of suicide came over him. He believed that there was no hope for his survival and that if he were to pull a triger to his head it would be no different then becoming a patient, and wasting all of his time getting treatment because it would all be worth nothing in the end; due to the results, he had the understanding that he was most definitely going to end up dying anyways. Ben then wondered how he would break the news to his Fiancee, Samantha, and if he should still go through with the wedding as planned or not.

While walking back from the doctor’s office, he heads down an alleyway and runs into an older gentleman who is selling his motorcycle, Ben then decides to take it for a ride and ends up recieving it as a gift. With no destination in mind, Ben finds himself heading to the western part of Canada with his motorcycle to escape the consequenses of his foreshortened existance on the quest to find meaning in his life. On his venture around Canada’s vast landscape, he stops at various locations that have both iconic and remarkable monuments, he finds all sorts of symbols along the way, in which he places his faith in. Throughout these experiences Ben finds the strength and courage to face his own bleak end.

Walking home that very day from school, I thought to myself … What would I do if I had only one week left to live? This maybe surprising to those of you who are reading this, but I found this question simple yet oddly difficult to answer. This film was truly inspiring. It shows you that your life can just be taken away from you in just a blink of an eye and you have the choice of either leaving with having the pain of knowing you have lived a meaningless life, suffering with the pain of regret and not letting yourself live life to its full extent, or you can have your life nearing its end and suffer from only the physical pain that we all eventually face, but you’ll always know that, that pain you’ve experienced will all be worth it in the end because, you left with the greatest treasure of all… a life that was significant and had true meaning.

shanelle dejanovic

We were asked to do an activity that told us to, write a creative writing peice on a location that we had visited while we were biking around the Island with our groups. It had instructed us to write either a paragraph, lyric,poem or rap.

Just my group and I, on an open road. We rode our bikes down the hill freely without a care in the world. I stood up on my bike with no petal movement what-so-ever, and leaned towards the wind as a gentle breeze brushed back the tiny strands of hair from my face. I breathed in a breathe of fresh air and I exhaled out with a warm breathe. Once we got up to the boardwalk, we hopped off our bikes and walked beside them. We then reached the creeky wooded steps of the dock that overlooked the glistening water of the Lake which then we began to write our creative writing peices.