Library and Archives Canada and the Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917, with the generous support of the Embassy of Belgium and the Canadian War Museum, are hosting a special event today at the war museum in Ottawa to mark the Canadian launch of the Names in the Landscape geoportal.
The online portal, developed through the support of the Flemish government, identifies the locations on a map in the contemporary landscape where missing Canadian soldiers fell or were initially buried.
Thanks to this project, descendants of missing soldiers can search for the probable place of death or burial of their ancestors.
To date, the museum has identified the initial resting places for more than 1,400 of the 6,928 Canadian soldiers whose names appear on the Menin Gate Memorial.
With the help of volunteers of the Genootschap Passchendaele Society 1917, the museum digitised and inventoried the details of these Canadians through the online sources of Library and Archives Canada. The result is the online geoportal where one can find information about which missing Canadians have been given an initial burial or death place. Visitors to the portal can add information, stories, anecdotes or photographs of a soldier.
According to Joachim Jonckheere, president of the Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917, the portal emphasizes the role of the landscape as the last witness.
The research is based on data from the Commonwealth War Graves Registers and the Circumstances of Death Registers, documents that give coordinates for a man’s place of death or initial burial. The museum says these coordinates are mostly an approximation. The officer who filled in the forms always did so based on an estimate, so the measurements given are not precise. Mistakes may also have been made in the noting down or copying of the information.
In addition, graves may have disappeared as a result of the constant shelling. Many of those described as missing had a grave, but were never identified.
Researchers with an interest in the First World War and Passchendaele will find the Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917‘s website worth a visit.
The museum has created a 30-second promotional video about the project, and here’s a quick overview about the Passchendael project.
