Your ChARTer 2019 Winners

A new creative arts contest, Your ChARTer invites Ontario students to submit original pieces of work that represents the core principles of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and what it means to them.

As an online competition, Your ChARTer is making opportunities to consider the Canadian Charter accessible to more students and classrooms across the province.

In its inaugural year, over 100 elementary and secondary school students from across Ontario participated by submitting creative art pieces in response to the theme: “How I live the Charter.”

Thank you to the lawyers who took the time to view the submissions and cast over 300 votes for the winners.

It is an honour to have the Chief Justice of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, the Honourable Heather Forster Smith announce our winners in the videos below.


ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS


FIRST PLACE

ID: E0003

Student Name: Lauren Yeomans and Brooke Sumarah
Grade: 5 
School: St. Jerome School 
City: Gloucester 
Teacher: Josephine Lima 
Submission Type: Visual Arts (Photograph, Drawing, Painting, etc)

View Submission

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SECOND PLACE

ID: E0002

Student Name: Grace Lagmay
Grade: 5 
School: St. Jerome School 
City: Gloucester 
Teacher: Josephine Lima 
Submission Type: Visual Arts (Photograph, Drawing, Painting, etc)

View Submission

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THIRD PLACE

ID: E0001

Student Name: Claira Milks
Grade: 5 
School: St. Jerome
City: Gloucester 
Teacher: Josephine Lima
Submission Type: Visual Arts (Photograph, Drawing, Painting, etc)

View Submission

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SECONDARY SCHOOLS


FIRST PLACE

ID: S0002

Student Name: Gabriel Cassidy
Grade: 11 
School: Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute
City: Toronto 
Teacher: Michelle Woodley 
Submission Type: Written Submission

View Submission

Poem

Description:The goal of my creative writing piece was partially self exploration, and partially and attempt to connect others through a common experience. When I first heard about this contest, I thought “I don’t feel connected to people through the Charter, I don’t really think about it!”. After sharing this thought with some of my classmates, they mostly agreed, which lead me to the realization that this common experience of taking rights and freedoms for granted is the very things that could connect people.

The opening stanza of my piece starts off with this idea: “I don’t think about my rights and freedoms much, and maybe I shouldn’t have to.” I used to hold this belief myself, and my goal was to relate to people who also think this way. In the next stanza I talk about the idea of rights, showing the reader that these are important, but still repeating the mantra of “I don’t think about my rights much”. The third stanza addresses the problem of hearing about words like “Freedoms” so much that they’re in in danger of losing meaning. In the media our rights and freedoms are spoken about a lot, but often in an impersonal way that makes them lose any meaning. The next three stanzas are meant to prove to the reader that you should think about your rights and freedoms, because if we don’t think about them we can easily ignore those who don’t have those same rights. I use sentence breaks in lines to place emphasis on certain words, as well as to force the reader to read some things twice. Lastly, I repeat the first stanza again, but this time I change my view: “I don’t think about my rights and freedoms much, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try”.


SECOND PLACE

ID: S0017

Student Name: Alisha Ahmed
Grade: 9 
School: Abbey Park High School
City: Oakville
Teacher: Kim Wilson
Submission type: Video/Audio Submission

View Submission

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Description:This is a spoken word poem about how the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms—specifically how article 2c "2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: c) freedom of peaceful assembly;" impacts our lives as Canadians and brings us together. It highlights how although we as Canadians have many differences, we can come together to promote shared ideas and values through peaceful assembly. In this poem I speak about how together not only are we united in our ideas, but together we can start small and eventually effect large-scale positive change. 


THIRD PLACE

ID: S0006

Student Name: Maya Danou
Grade: 11 
School: Saint Aloysius Gonzaga Secondary School
City: Mississauga
Teacher: Michael Gordon
Submission Type: Video

View Submission

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Description: Hello! I am submitting a video I created. I created the video based on how I feel Canada reflects our charter of rights and freedoms. Thank you for taking the time to watch this video!