Record of Service Education Guide
This guide offers classroom activities that promote research and analysis, build critical thinking and communication skills, and explore challenging ethical questions in Canada’s history.
The development and production of Historica Canada’s bilingual education guides is a collaborative process that engages history educators, academic historians, and community stakeholders in content creation and lesson planning.
This guide is designed to align with current Canadian curricula and has been produced for use in middle and high school history and social science classrooms. Teachers may wish to address topics not covered in this guide to provide a more complete understanding of Canada’s recent military history. Please be aware that the experiences of one group or one veteran are not representative of everyone, and many stories remain unexplored. The video interviews provide snapshots of the lives of veterans and servicepeople rather than complete stories. We hope these resources will help you work with primary sources to teach military history and oral history in your classroom.
This education guide has been created to accompany The Memory Project’s DVD, Record of Service: Canadian Contributions to International Peace and Security. The DVD explores Canada’s military contributions to the global community through the oral testimony of 15 Canadian veterans of the Second World War, the Korean War, the Cold War, peace operations, and the war in Afghanistan. The DVD encourages students and the public to reflect on how international engagements have shaped both individual experiences and the larger Canadian identity, and examines the legacies of these events and conflicts. The interviews also offer teachers the opportunity to present oral history as a valuable primary source and to incorporate firsthand accounts into classroom activities and discussions.