Essay Topics

Here are just a few to start:

In 1876, after the Battle of Little Big Horn, Sitting Bull led his people north into Canada. Why do you think he did it? Was it a good idea?

Niagara Falls is one of the great marvels of the world and among the country’s top tourism destination. Why is that? What have writers said about it? Explore ideas about why Niagara Falls is so famous and what that fame says about us. Explore things like thrill-seeking, aesthetics, gender concepts.

Is there a correlation between myths of dragons and the presence of fossil bones in some places in Canada and the rest of the world?  How much of mythology might be grounded in what people see in the land and environment around them?

You are a fact-checker at Maclean’s magazine. You’ve been assigned to check every fact in Gordon Lightfoot’s classic Canadian folk song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”. Let’s see your report.

If you really wanted to tackle an important political or social issue, how would you go about it? What institutions would you try to influence? Think of what you would do if you had lots of money to work with, and what approach you would take if you were poor.

Is Canada a "warrior nation"?

Explain why Canada's regions have trouble understanding each other and what can be done to make Canadians understand each other better.

Canada is, constitutionally, a bilingual country. How can that be translated into linguistic fairness?

Analyze Quebec's official position on secular public space and try to see if it reflects public opinion.

If you were going to add a new "right" to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, what would it be? Why would you add that right, and how would it improve Canadian society?

Explain the struggle for survival of the Plains Metis or one First Nation group.

Explain how a person could become Prime Minister of Canada, if they chose that as their career. Look at elective politics -- i.e. the institutional hoops this person would have to jump through -- and the political marketing system that they would need to master.

Does the media serve Canada well?

Canada's regions, outside southern Ontario, often feel alienated from the centres of political and economic power. Pick a region and examine its history of complaints. Examine what Ottawa has done to alleviate them, and discuss whether the region`will likely ever be satisfied.