Young Citizens

The Young Citizens program is a complementary program to heritage fairs. Each student is tasked with creating a short video report on the topic they explored for their heritage fair project.  The student videos are posted online at YoungCitizens.ca  or JeunesCitoyens.ca, where they are encouraged to share them with family, friends, and community members.

The best videos will be selected by popular vote across the country and a review by a panel of judges. Ultimately, the winners will win a trip to Ottawa to present their film and participate at the Canada’s History Youth Forum.

In 2016, 200 students created videos

The videos were viewed more than 40,000 times. The national vote was a great success with more than 40,500 votes cast and the videos received more than 5000 comments.

Every year, young citizens give interviews to dozens of regional and national media. The program has received national coverage by CBC and CTV (links below).

CBC:  http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/TV+Shows/The+National/ID/2252193338/

CTV : http://www.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=3856122

Creating the video

Canada’s History has created a document called Participant Guidelines which provides information and advice about all the stages of video creation. We also recommend that participants watch a few of the videos from previous years to get a sense of what’s required. Some of the main guidelines include:

  1. Videos must be between 3 and 4 minutes long. Videos that don’t meet this time requirement (over or under the time) will be penalized
  2. Students must cite their sources and respect all copyright rules
  3. Videos should be submitted to Canada’s History via the free, file-transfer program called Dropbox

All videos must be received by Canada’s History before June , 2020. 

Ideas and Inspiration for 2020

There is no set theme for Young Citizens this year, but students may wish to explore a topic related to a number of special anniversaries coming up

  • Manitoba 150

Young Citizens Timeline Calendar 2019-20

National conference with all provincial and territorial Heritage Fair coordinators.
Fall 2016 Promotion of Heritage Fairs and Young Citizens in schools and education conferences.
April/May, 2020 Heritage Fairs across Canada take place
May 6, 2020 Red River Heritage Fair
June , 2020 Deadline to participate Kayak Kids’ Illustrated History Challenge
June , 2020 Deadline to submit Young Citizen videos to Canada’s History
June , 2020 Online vote opens for Young Citizens
June , 2020 Final report Deadline for 2016-2017 Heritage Fairs and Young Citizens programs
July , 2020 Canada History Week
July , 2020 Online vote for Young Citizens closes
August, 2020 Young Citizens recipients are announced
November, 2020 Canada’s History Youth Forum in Ottawa