Historica Canada Education Portal

The Memory Project Visit Organizers: How to complete a speaking engagement via video call

This list of resources has been compiled to further students’ knowledge of Indigenous contributions to Canadian military history. Students can read and listen to the articles and testimonies to learn more about the reasons Indigenous people joined the Canadian military, their achievements and challenges while serving, and their experiences following their service.

Teachers are encouraged to preview the testimonies before assigning them, as stories of war often include graphic content.

The Host a Speaker Kit is designed to help educators and students deepen their understanding of military history and develop thoughtful questions for a Memory Project speaker.

This learning tool explores the Battle of Normandy, better known as D-Day.

It includes:
- An ABC guide to D-Day
- D-Day diary excerpts from Commander Desmond Piers
- Canadian Veteran's Poem
- Just-A-Minute interactive game

This learning tool explores the Battle of the Atlantic from multiple points of view.

Included are:
- An ABCs guide to the Battle of the Atlantic with research prompts.
- First-hand accounts of the battle from a Navy Officer from Bristich Columbia, a Navy Bride from Ontario, and a German U-Boat officer.
- A game called Just-A-Minute.

Resources:

Andrew Irwin's story - The Memory Project

Iolanda "Vy" Connolly's story - The Memory Project

Werner Max Hirschmann's story - The Memory Project

This learning tool explores the Second World War using multiple points of view.

Included are:

- An ABCs guide to the Second World War with research prompts

- A lyrical analysis activity

- Voices of War, a collection of war-time perspectives (Includes a long and short testimony of Squadron Leader George Stewart, DFC)

- A game titled Just-A-Minute

This learning tool explores Canada's role in the First World War.

Included are:
- A guide to using the learning tool
- An ABC of Canada in the First World War I with research prompts
- Two games titled A Family Affair and Just-A-Minute

Students will interview relatives for their childhood memories of the Second World War. The relatives should have been near the ages of the students during the War. After the interview, students will provide a first person written account in postcard format with a prepared charcoal drawing or an archival photograph to represent the memoire. The students will learn interview techniques, creating a postcard, an art medium, and importantly family lore.

To learn interview...

The focus of the project is for students to create a postcard from the past. The aim for students will involve three steps.
• First to interview a grandparent or great grandparent about a memory. This memory may express what life was like for them as a child or perhaps a wartime memory.
• Second will be to obtain a photograph of the grandparent or great grandparent that will be used on the postcard. This may be achieved using a photograph, scanned photograph or drawing.
• Third will be...

This activity will help students become more aware of the terms Shell Shock, Battle Exhaustion, and PTSD.

The stress that comes from soldiers fighting under the conditions they faced was extremely difficult to deal with. This lesson outlines the development of the concept of battle exhaustion, from the initial understanding of shell shock during the Great War to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in our current Canadian missions.

To develop the students' understanding of the...

Start this activity by introducing your students to Canadian writer John McCrae with the Heritage Minute about his poem "In Flanders Field" and to the Unknown Soldier by reading "Waiting in Line" from Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul (text below).

"Waiting in Line"