How has the geography of the West shaped who we are?

When it comes to the Frank Slide I can think about how every theme of geography can tie into it but I’m going to focus on two right now; human environmental interaction and movement. First let’s talk about movement! When the Frank Slide first happened everyone quickly started moving rocks out of the way to get the mine up and running. It took just three weeks to completely move all the rocks away and continue mining but also get the railway to continue to move products. Now onto human environmental interaction! Long after the Frank Slide happened the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre was created! They adapted to the miles and miles of rubble then modified it by creating pathways through it to get tours down. I find it very Interesting how they turned such a huge disaster into a learning experience. 

In the photo you can see the trail that was made to modify the site to become a tourist attraction (human environment interaction). You can also see the trees in the back which shows how nature is adapting to the rock fall that happened so long ago. 

I loved walking through all the rubble and rocks because it felt so unreal. The normal world we walk around in isn’t rocks for miles, there’s always trees and buildings but this was different. It felt like I was walking around in a different world! I said it looked like ‘The Who”s album cover but no one knew who that was. 

<a href="bookcreator://page/goAeIC2RT1OUBygrfBJz5g">Five Themes of Geography Comic</a>…………………………………………………………….. pages 3-9

<a href="bookcreator://page/W5DCyJEnR0OdsxbrJRJ7LQ">Questions #1 #2 #3 Legend</a>……………………………………………………………………….. page 10

<a href="bookcreator://page/hl63Lr7QRX6db1RO450lOA">The Last Spike Reflection</a>……………………………………………………………………… pages 11-13

<a href="bookcreator://page/iPhC2wDBTmewEHOLFNyz5g">The Downtown Calgary Reflection</a> ……………………………………………………….. pages 14-16

<a href="bookcreator://page/1EOiAjbXSjGlPV7gj-PwDg">The Calgary Zoo Reflection</a> …………………………………………………………………… pages 17-19

<a href="bookcreator://page/2kPMlwDhSiWg8IbLTxp5NQ">The Frank Slide Reflection</a> …………………………………………………………………….. pages 20-22

<a href="bookcreator://page/5RFRXhXETk-Im2Ot7HxTAQ">The Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump World Heritage Site Reflection</a> .……. pages 23-25

<a href="bookcreator://page/ctpbfvXdRry8G25nnwPsGg">The Cave and Basin National Historic Site Reflection</a> …………………………… pages 26-28

<a href="bookcreator://page/oOdhNWttQ8yPkrQIArxtGA">The Glacier Skywalk and Columbian Ice Field Reflection</a> ………………………. pages 29-31

<a href="bookcreator://page/hxYhroTrToe2ZwfmpsKCpA">The Golden Sky Bridge Reflection</a> …………………………………………………………. pages 32-34

<a href="bookcreator://page/U9_xwDLeT7qTpVrCvi1YQw">The Heritage Ghost Town Activity</a> ………………………………………………………………… page 35

<a href="bookcreator://page/o21pRuDLQ7CeWtvhtZd9Hw">The Heritage Ghost Town Selfie Activity</a> ………………………………………………………. page 36

<a href="bookcreator://page/oaP-_i9GQwa1HnMtWf2nDw">The Down Hill Karting Activity</a> …………………………………………………………………….. page 37

<a href="bookcreator://page/_a0AXkz_QK6y8O-AXQwNSA">Authors Page</a>……………………………………………………………………………………………… page 38

Reflection #6 Cave and Basin National Historic Site

In this photo I showed the pond that we are not allowed to touch. We aren’t allowed to touch it because it contains the endangered snail they are trying to preserve. I think this shows the geographic theme human environment interaction. I think this because we have modified the land to save the snail, which then forces the snail to depend on us. I also thought about movement because of the transportation of people it took to come through this site. The area was used at first by indigenous people that found the sulfur spring, but now it is used as a tourist attraction. 

Along with the last reflection you read this location is also keeping indigenous life alive. Instead of ignoring how the indigenous peoples first found the spring they embraced it and helped explain what happened. I love how they went in detail about how they used to use it (they lowered a tree log down and used its branches to climb down). 

I loved this tour/museum because it was very interactive. At the start the tour guide brought us towards a tent which had a actor inside playing out things that happened in their day to day mining life. He then came out and gave some people objects like ropes and a lantern. We had to walk with these objects until the end where we got to use them. I had a lot of fun doing these things. 

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump World Heritage Site

Firstly region is the main theme of geography I think of when I see this photo, Downtown Calgary is given its borders by the government but along with that it was also named through vernacular regions. People have named this downtown Calgary because of its placement in the city. Other than regions another major theme here is movement. While we walked around the city I noticed lots of different forms of transportation.  There were many train stations, cars, bridges, and rentable bikes. This shows how important the city finds transportation. Moving people around the city to all the different tourist attractions is the main focus for what the government wants in the city. 

In the photo you can see all the diverse types of people in the crowd. You can also see the kinds of structures that are built in the city. I think this photo really shows the diversity of the west because all the different kinds of things in one place. You can see the fair happening that brought together everyone in the city plus all the tourists from many different places. 

I really liked this town because of its many tourist attractions and honestly I just found it very beautiful and peaceful. I loved the golden hour walk we did back to the hotel and when we got back the sun shone through all the windows in the hostel and illuminated everything in a gold glow. I would love to come back one day and explore the city further. I also really loved the structure of the library we went into. <br/>

Reflection #5 Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump World Heritage Site

A huge theme that plays a major role in this photo is movement. It took a lot of people to get to this area then set up for the Buffalo jump.  They had to then plan what to do after the jump actually happened. There was probably so many different ways of getting the dead Buffalos back to camp. Another theme is location.  In that photo is the exact location they did the Buffalo jumps, and I went to it!

This photo embraces the indigenous culture by keeping this sacred location alive. It is now a tourist attraction that helps teach people about how the Buffalo jump worked. The indigenous peoples herded the Buffalo off the cliff to kill them, then brought them home and processed the meat (they also used other parts like the bones). 

I enjoyed learning about the way certain people used to survive off the land and all the techniques. I like walking through museums and readings/looking at all the new interesting things. I learned so much about how they processed the Buffalo but also how they kept track of years, it was so cool. 

For this project we got to go to the Heritage Ghost Town in Three Gap Valley. This Ghost town was a old building prop area we got to look through. The family owned hotel bought all of these old historical buildings, and filled them with props and fake people to make them look like how they used to function. We explored through all the buildings in the ‘town’ and then created a video there. Our task was to make a old fashion looking video that has a storyline (start, end, finish). My group (Jupiter, Kadin, and me) decided to make the video about a pregnant women (I starred as the pregnant women). In the video the pregnant women was going to work, she always used the bus to get there. One day on her bus route when the bus was particularly crowed she found no seats to sit in. She looked around and no one gave her a seat. From the swaying of the bus she started to fall! Luckily there was someone very kind close to her. They caught her and gave her their seat to sit in. When she got to work she was very thankful to that person, it made her day even just a little bit better.  

The Golden Skybridge to me easily displays human environment interaction, first of all to make the bridge over the valley then to add climbing equipment on the trees. We modified the land for a tourist attraction and added things to it to attract people. We also interacted with the environment by adapting to its great valleys and made zip lines over it. Along with human interaction there is movement as well. People moved along the bridge and through the ropes course, this is human transportation across the valley. 

This bridge makes the west what it is by bringing different kinds of tourists in and bringing them joy. Many have crossed the bridge over the valley then done the ropes course there. The people who made this attraction had to transform the area and worked with the large valley they had. 

My own connection is to the zip lines, when I was younger my dad and I used to make our own zip lines from tree to tree down hills. It was really fun and when I went on the huge zip line across the valley it reminded me of then. 

What is Geography through one or more of the Five Themes of Geography?

What made and makes the West by how this photograph represents the physical environment influencing the nature of political, social, and economic change the West?

My own connection to the geographical place the photo represents is?

Hi I’m Brooke and I am the author of this Ebook I made about the diversity in The West. I’d like to talk a bit about myself here. First off I am 14 years old and I’m in grade nine. I have played soccer for as long as I can remember and I play on two different teams (The Orioles and Seyhawks!) as a central defender. Some of my hobbies are writing and knitting, I also spend most of my time watching Netflix. In school my favourite classes currently are science and gym, I really like science because I find the things we learn fascinating, and I love gym because I find the sports and activities we do really fun. Last year I got a award in gym class! I spent a lot of time and effort on this Ebook so I hope you enjoyed reading it.

That was a comic about the five themes of geography, which now after reading you should be slightly familiar with. I will now go further into each theme!

The five themes of geography are what makeup geography. There’s the categories: Place, Location, Regions, Movement, and Human Environment Interaction. All these five categories have sub categories.

Lets start with Place, place is the physical appearance of areas. These natural characteristics consist of landforms like rivers, mountains, and soil, along with plants and animals, climate and resources. Place is what makes up the area and not the exact location.

Secondly is location, location is our exact area. In longitude and latitude what is our absolute location? Currently mine is 49.3 (N) latitude and 122.9 (W) longitude. 

Now lets talk about movement, movement is pretty simple but there is still sub categories. Those sub categories are, Human movement (moving people from place to place), Product movement (moving products from place to place), and finally ideas (move ideas from place to place). But products are physical things so how do you move them? You can move ideas by taking one person who knows a lot about forestry and that person goes across a bridge then tells other people about their forestry. Then the forestry idea is now moved across the bridge. 

Now I’ll talk about human environment interaction. Basically what human environment interaction is, is different ways we interact with the environment. The three ways we do are, adapt to it, modify it, and change it. <br/><br/>

Then there is regions, regions is areas that certain things have put borders around or along to make it what it is. There are formal regions, functional, and vernacular. Formal regions are regions that are declared regions by governments. Functional regions are decided by how they are used for, for example a highway and a newspaper route are functional regions. Then lastly is vernacular, this one is based off of peoples perceptions. The places characteristics is what makes up its in boarders, like “The Lower mainland” there are no exact boarders people just named that general area that. 

How the west’s geography is bursting with diversity 

What are the five themes of geography? Find out in this comic made by me!

When I first walked through the Calgary Zoo, I started thinking about how they got all the different types of animals there. It takes lots of movement to transport the animals there (Product movement). Along with the theme of movement I also thought about the geography theme human environmental interaction. People took the environment as it already was then modified it so adapt to all the different kinds of animals. All the diverse animals needed their own kinds of environment to live in, so we created each one for them. I find this really Interesting how humans modified the environment to make a zoo. 

In this photo I tried to capture how all these different types of people came together to the Calgary Zoo to look at the animals. You can see how many people gather around one exhibit. I also wanted to say that every persons culture should be displayed somewhere in the Zoo because they had many different animals from many different areas. 

I really liked walking through the zoo because I saw a lot of animals I have never seen in real life before. Some animals I saw that I haven’t seen before are camels, flamingos, giraffes, and ostriches. It was so cool seeing these animals, they were bigger then I thought they’d be!

Reflection #7 Glacier Skywalk and Colombian Ice Field 

In this photo you can clearly see us using the natural fresh water from the glaciers to drink. This is showing us humans interacting with the environment by depending on it. I really liked the taste of the water but a lot of people did not. The other geography theme I thought of is movement. We had to ride three different vehicles to get to the glacier; the bus to get us there, the gravel road bus to bring everyone to the second area, and the glacier bus. The buses transported us down the steepest drivable hill, it was quite scary but also kind of fun. 

This photo shows diversity because of the diverse environment. Its very rare to find glaciers but also drinkable natural water. I found it very interesting to see all the different sorts of things. The West is so diverse you can find almost every environment in it. 

I found this whole experience very fun and interesting, I have never done anything like that before. First of all was getting onto the glacier, all the transportation vehicles were fun but also scary to ride. Then was the actual glacier! We got to walk around an ice field was that miles thick. Along with exploring it we got to drink its water. Then there was the ride back down, and after that the skywalk. We got to walk over a glass bridge that suspended us over a gigantic valley with the glacier and mountains in view. It was so fascinating that you could just look down and see so far down into the valley. 

The Heritage Ghost Town is a prop filled town of old fashion buildings. While exploring through them our mission was to take a selfie with something in the town that we think wouldn’t be very usual to see or find. I chose this tent because its not something I would usually see. Yes this was a usual sight back then but not anymore

The first major theme I see in this photo is movement. The Last Spike was significant because it was the very last spike driven into the ground to finish the CPR railway. This railway helped carry tons and tons of supplies and people all over Canada, which is the movement of people and products. Along with movement is location. The Last Spike is a government made memorial that many tourists visit. 

In this photo you can see the large stone monument in the middle. This commemorated the CPR being completed from ocean to ocean. I think this impacts the social nature of the west. I think this because having made that moment so important to the people of the west adds to their culture. The CPR really helped bring cultures together. That Last Spike is now important to them and important to the land they reside on. 

My relatives used the railway to transport their family out to the west coast. There they then established their home. This is my personal connection because without the railway I wouldn’t be here. If my relatives didn’t have kids with other people who had kids with other people and so on then I would cease to exist.

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