To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the First World War, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is creating an online memorial featuring the stories of 100 men and women who served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and experienced war first hand. LAC began with 11 stories on November 11, 2015 and will add more stories to its website each month.
This project is in conjunction with the mammoth task of digitizing the full service records of the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
If Ye Break Faith – We Shall Not Sleep, WWI, Nicolet, Frank Lucien (1887-?), Ref: WP1.B1.F1. Rare Books & Special Collections, McGill University Library.
LAC explains the initiative: “All of the stories are biographical in nature and compiled largely from original military records, photographs, census records, and other historical materials held at Library and Archives Canada. Some of the information is drawn from other notable sources, such as The London Gazette, the Canadian Virtual War Memorial, and Books of Remembrance. The stories have been selected to reflect the diversity of both experience and source material. The service records vary in length from less than 10 pages, to hundreds of pages. In some cases, where errors and inconsistencies are evident in the records, clarifications and corrections have been added after the original source text.”
If your ancestor is not among those featured, you may be inspired by the format to write your own brief memorial to share with family.
First 11 WWI memorials
Memorials about these men were the first ones written by LAC.
Babcock, John Henry, Ontario Army
Baboo, John, Manitoba/India/British Columbia Army
Banting, Frederick Grant, Ontario Medical Corps
Bastien, Alfred Theodore, Belgium Army/War Artist
Bazalgette, Charles Ian, Alberta/England Army
Beck, Walter Joseph, Nova Scotia Army
Belaney, Archibald Stansfield, Nova Scotia Army
Bethune, Henry Norman, Ontario Medical Corps
Bishop, William Avery, Ontario Army/Air
Bodziak, John Poland Army,
McCrae, John Alexander, Ontario Medical Corps
Visit 100 Stories: Canadian Who Served in the First World War to learn more about the project, read the memorials, and access the service files. As of November 16, LAC had digitized 217,062 of 640,000 WWI service files.
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