The many ways to remember

Author Linda Granfield's website is a wonderful place to visit this Remembrance Day, or for that matter, any other day of the year.

Even better, get your hands on one of Granfield's extraordinary picture books - including In Flanders Fields and Where Poppies Grow. The former, written in 1995, is a stunningly illustrated story of the poem by John McCrae. The followup, published six years later, is a collection of photos, memorabilia and anecdotes of the Great War. The books are written for children but suitable for any age and especially for sharing.

The Massachusetts-born Granfield, who lives in Toronto, is a shining example of how it's possible to make the Remembrance Day message relevant to a generation who can't remember. And not only on Nov. 11 but throughout the year.

Yesterday, an article in one Toronto newspaper cited a recent poll as evidence that a growing number of Canadians are tuning out Remembrance Day along with knowledge and interest in military history.

But personally, thanks to Granfield and other writers, educators and historians, this isn't my experience. From an early age, my own kids were far more informed about Remembrance Day and interested in war history than I ever was as a child. I credit a combination of factors: recent initiatives taken by public schools to honour Remembrance Day, including visits by young soldiers to talk about history and peacemaking; a wealth of children's literature, including non-fiction books and novels set in war time; museums that offer hands-on experiences and engaging websites for kids.

This Toronto Star story includes examples of high school iniatives going on in the GTA this week, including a letter-writing campaign to families of soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

Among the books that got my own children asking questions were: novels by Canadian writer Kit Pearson, especially her trilogy set during the Second World War that started with The Sky is Falling, Marie Mcswigan's classic Snow Treasure, and the Breadwinner trilogy, set in wartorn Afghanistan and written by prolific Ontario author Deborah Ellis.

Last spring, I accompanied a Grade 5 field trip to Ottawa and among the highlights was a visit to the Canadian War Museum, where the 10-year-olds were awestruck by everything from tanks to Hitler's limousine to the recreated World War I trenches and streetscapes. If you can't get there, visit the museum's online youth site.

In a newspaper story last year, Granfield said young people have shown a resurgence of interest in military history and a yearning to "take the torch and hold it high." She figured she'd spoken to 250,000 schoolkids in the 10 years since In Flanders Fields was published.

So maybe polls showing fewer folks can identify military heroes doesn't really paint a full picture. As military historian Terry Copp was quoted as saying, a lot of the details aren't important to kids' daily lives. “Learning bits of information about Canadians in the two world wars does not imply understanding,” he added.

Do you have any books, websites or exhibits to suggest? If so please post them in the comments link below.

Comments

[Laura]

I live in Singapore, which is now a fairly affluent island country in South East Asia. However, until the Second World War, Singapore was a British colony, and it fell quickly to the Japanese in December 1941 due to the mistaken British belief that the Japanese would attack by sea. Instead, they came through the jungles of Malaya. The people here (both locals and expats) suffered great hardship during the occupation. The history is well-covered by the local museums and the National Archives exhibits (www.changimuseum.com and http://www.nhb.gov.sg/NAS/NewsAndEvents/Ford+Factory.htm, for example) However, a few years ago, one of the schools as part of its heritage program had the students go on a diet of war rations--they ate only what the prisoners of war would have eaten, and they did work that was a watered down version of what the people had to do then. I gather it was a shocking and upsetting experience for the students. Reading and looking at pictures of the War's devastating effects on the country didn't personalize the war the way the starvation diet did.

[Oldtimer]

Re the WW2 camps in the Far East -
worth a read is "Three Came Home" by Agnes Newton Keith. Memorable since our youth as so lacking in the hate one would expect.
And for the trenches, R.C Sherriff's play "Journey's End". Both written near the time of the events depicted, thus in contemporary context rather than evaluated. regards.