About me
My name is Megan Mckinlay. I graduated from Pleasant Valley Secondary School in 2018, so this is my first semester at Thompson Rivers University. My long term plan is to become a high school Social Studies/Drama teacher. For the last two summers I have worked at the R.J Haney Heritage Village and Museum as an actor in their dinner theatre. Their goal is to educate the public about the history of Salmon Arm and area through fun live theatre. Two years ago the show they produced that summer was called The Royal Tynemouth Operatic Society. It was about four women traveling to Victoria on the Tynemouth steamship. That show was one of my favourites and inspired me in this class to learn more about these women’s story. For my Primary Document Analysis I looked at a newspaper page about the Tynemouth women. For my Research Paper I wrote about the reasons these women came to Victoria. To follow the rest of my course assignments in order please click here.
I chose to take the class Introduction to Pre-Confederate Canadian History because I wanted to start at the beginning. It has been an amazing class, not only have I learnt about my history as a Canadian but also how to be a better reader and writer. I also learned about “doing history”. The concept of “doing history” was new to me. In high school, history is about memorizing facts, not analyzing documents and creating an opinion. The class has taught me how to analyze documents and create my own opinion of the past. The weekly reading logs have helped me practice and tune those skills. I would recommend this class to a friend, because it has helped me grow in many ways.