The Contest

The Begbie Canadian History contest is sponsored by the Begbie Contest Society. The Society currently receives financial support from the BC Social Studies Teachers’ Association, the Ontario History and Social Science Teachers’ Association, the Canadian Parents for French, Canada’s National History Society and the Canadian Studies Program, Department of Canadian Heritage.The contest is designed for interested senior level secondary school students. The aim of the competition is to provide students with an opportunity to test their skills in history against those of students from schools across Canada. The contest is not an examination, and there is no passing or failing grade.

We believe that all students who have prepared for the contest will enjoy and benefit from the experience.

Students are provided with a rich variety of primary and secondary sources dealing with national issues and with questions which require them to use the critical thinking skills historians employ in analyzing such sources. The contest questions are based on major events ion Canadian history from 1850 to the present. The emphasis is on critical thinking skills using primary sources such as political cartoons, paintings, posters, graphs, maps, statistics, songs, speeches, diaries, letters. newspaper articles, and memoirs.

The Contest is two hours in length and is normally written in the candidate’s school under the supervision of a classroom teacher. It consists of 25 multiple choice, questions many of which require students to assess or interpret source documents, one paragraph response question and one essay which require students to develop a thesis regarding an issue in Canadian history based on their interpretation of a variety of source documents presenting different points of view on the issue.