“Not in the least,” exclaimed Susan Garrett, a Grade 4/5 teacher at Spul’u’kwuks elementary who has spent the better part of three years writing the script and song lyrics for a musical stage production that showcases important moments in our nation’s past.
Called We Are Canadian, The True Story of Canada, it involved just about the entire student body of the west Richmond school. And to accommodate that, the production needed the expanse of Gateway Theatre’s stage where, on Wednesday night, the performance was held.
“It’s been a pretty ambitious undertaking,” said Garrett on Wednesday morning, just prior to a final dress rehearsal. “I grew up in Canada, but I must have missed the Canadian history component in Grade 5 because I didn’t know all of this history. And when I did my teacher training in the U.S., at the University of Washington, I didn’t get it there, either.”
So, Garrett literally went back to school to gather information about Canada’s past that fits in with the Grade 5 curriculum and fashioned a musical around it.
“We have kids at the beginning of the play talking about how boring Canadian history is, and suddenly out pops a pair of talking beavers from the Fraser River and sets them straight,” Garrett said.
The beavers, Mr. and Mrs. Puck, take the children on a trip back in time from the day of the Musqueam people in the Fraser River delta area, on through to the early explorers, the time of the Voyageurs, the underground railway that provided freedom in Canada for American slaves, the gold rush, development of the Canadian National Railroad and the contributions of Canada’s soldiers over the years.
Garrett said the composition of families at Spul’u’kwuks rests heavily on new immigrants, so the musical’s focus is of great importance, especially the portions dealing with the role Chinese labourers played in constructing the national railway linking Canada from east to west.
“It was important to have included something that spoke to their culture directly,” Garrett said, adding the song Men of China tells their tale.
The production features about a dozen songs, each with their own video that Garrett researched and collected images for from various archival sources in Richmond and Vancouver.
This is not the first stage production Garret has undertaken from the ground up. A few years ago she staged one focusing on fairies that was performed at the school.
For the current one, a portion of the play was performed by Grade 3 and 5 students last year, also at the school. When the decision was made to include the bulk of the school’s population this year, Gateway Theatre was the first choice of venue.
Helping with the timing for such a large scale event is the fact Spul’u’kwuks runs on a balanced school schedule that has students break for summer holidays at the end of July.
And since Canada Day was right around the corner, Garrett said the timing was perfect for the footlights to be lit for her historical journey.
“It’s a nice patriotic look at our country,” she said.
