Think Like a Historian: The Last 100 Days
To mark the centennial of the Last Hundred Days of the First World War (August 8 to November 11, 1918), Historica Canada has created this education guide, designed to help educators and students think critically about primary sources as they learn about this period in Canadian history.
This series invites students to deepen their understanding of the Last Hundred Days and its larger historical context and impact through primary source analysis. Analyzing primary sources offers students an opportunity to explore historical events from the perspective of those who lived them.
On August 8, 1918, Allied forces began a series of major offensives on the Western Front. Despite suffering heavy casualties over the next three months, the Canadian Corps and other Allied forces won key battles at Amiens, Arras, the Drocourt-Quéant Line, the Canal du Nord, Cambrai, Valenciennes, and Mons. This period of successive Allied victories ultimately forced Germany’s surrender, and contributed to the signing of the armistice on November 11 that ended the First World War. Historians often refer to the battles during this period as the Last Hundred Days or the Hundred Days Offensive. However, this period is sometimes referred to as Canada’s Hundred Days because of the significant contribution and sacrifice that Canadian soldiers made to its success.
The Think Like a Historian films and this education guide explore the experiences and perspectives of those who fought by focusing on primary sources — physical artifacts created in the past that provide evidence about the question or topic being focused on. Primary sources include, but are not limited to: photographs, artwork, diaries and journals, letters, reports, objects and artifacts, and contemporary newspapers. Primary sources can be classified as accounts or traces. Primary source accounts are created by people who had direct access to the events being investigated to describe, explain, or “account” for events that occurred. There are many types of primary source accounts, including interviews, memoirs, and autobiographies. Traces are artifacts (objects) from the past that are left behind as the result of activities at the time. Although primary source traces are often purposefully created, they were not created to describe, explain, or assess a historical event, person, or development.