Canada’s Aging War Veterans Urged to Share Stories

Each November, Remembrance Day is celebrated here in Canada, and Veterans Day is celebrated in the United States. These days honour the men and woman who have fought to keep our nations safe. I have had numerous family members serve in the Canadian military ranks over the years. One aspect that I’ve always appreciated are their stories of what happened while they served our country. I came across a Canadian Press article, written by Sunny Freeman, which explained the urgency of getting information from soldiers who served in the Second World War. I fully agree that this task is both urgent and very meaningful to all sides involved.

TORONTO – With an average age of 86 and a fatality rate of 500 per week, Second World War veterans, a valuable and dwindling resource, are being urged to share their stories of valour and sacrifice with a new generation before it’s too late.

In 1994, there were 500,000 veterans, which means 325,000 have died in just over a decade, said Jeremy Diamond, managing director of the Historica Dominion Institute.

The institute, along with poppy-wearing veterans and the young people they inspired, celebrated the one-millionth Canadian student reached through the national Memory Project in Toronto on Saturday.

Diamond said the veterans and teachers are both feeling the urgency of retelling their private war stories to young people.

“There’s a real urgency to encourage those that experienced these things during the war to come out and share their experience with young people and really create that necessary legacy,” he said.

Rachel Jean, a Grade 11 student in Oakville, Ont., represents the one-millionth Canadian student reached through the project.

Jean said hearing a veteran speak to her class brought the stories she read about in textbooks to life and inspired her to learn more.

“To most (young) people (the war) is just something written down in a text book and Remembrance Day is just kind of a day, I don’t think people think about it too much,” she said.

“It’s so foreign to us that you really need to listen to veterans and read stories and do research in order to understand.”

Diamond said the Memory Project Speakers’ Bureau, which has brought 1,500 veterans to classrooms across the country, has been a cross-generational hit since it was created in 2001.

“Often Canadians complain that our young people don’t know their own history. This is an opportunity to change that, to put a living face in front of them and say ‘thank you, but also what was it like’? ”

Oral historians are also gathering and recording stories of Canadians who experienced the war, including the stories that remain untold in Canadian textbooks.

Second War War prisoner of war Grant McCrae, 87, had the idea to start the project in 1989, when he was selling poppies.

A teacher approached him who was curious about gaping holes about her father who died in action in the war. She asked him if there was anyone who would come and speak to her class.

“She looked me straight in the eye and said ‘what about you’?”

McCrae became the project’s first volunteer speaker. He travels to classrooms to share his tales about the air force, being shot down by German soldiers and his time as a prisoner of war.

“There are good parts and there are sad parts. The sad part is when I was shot down I lost three members of my crew. That I will never forget.”

McCrae says he feels he owes young people an opportunity he was never afforded.

“When I grew up my father was in World War One, but I never knew what he did and what took place,” he said.

Veteran Affairs Minister Greg Thompson presented McCrae with a plaque honouring his contribution to preserve Canadian history.

Thompson added that the project has contributed to increasing turnouts at memorials on Remembrance Day.

“Our veterans never sought the headlines but they have written the true story of Canadian history,” he said.

“We are raising a new generation of Canadians who know their past and are proud to promote it.”