Courses
- British Columbia History
- Canadian History
- British North American Colonial History
- Aboriginal History in British Columbia
- James Douglas “Father of British Columbia”
- Important events in the historical development of British Columbia
- Analysis of primary and secondary sources
Did Governor James Douglas Deserve to be Knighted?
Step 4: Assemble three teams
Students are now ready to examine multiple historical documents from their assigned incident to determine whether Douglas was worthy of his knighthood. Inform students that the documents for each case study have been organized chronologically from the start of the conflict to the end. Distribute relevant copies of the following documents to the appropriate team:
- #6 Core Documents: the Murder of Peter Brown (7 documents).
- #7 Core Documents: the Shooting of Thomas Williams (6 documents).
- #8 Core Documents: the Fraser River War (5 documents).
When allocating documents, consider the following options:
- with younger students, model analysis of a few documents from each case study with each team and then assign pairs of students to analyze two or three documents.
- invite teams to divide into smaller groups so that each group has three or four different documents to analyze.
- with more advanced students, divide the teams in half and assign each half all of the documents to analyze.
Optional: Distribute multiple copies of the activity sheet, #9 Reading Around a Document, and encourage students to use the questions on the activity sheet as a pre-reading guide for each document they are assigned. Direct students to the information at the beginning and end of the document to identify clues about its nature. You may want to require older students (individually or in groups) to provide a completed copy of this activity sheet for each text document analyzed.
