Youth more engaged in Remembrance Day: think tank

Lest we forget. It’s a maxim that Canadian youth are taking more seriously than ever, according to the country’s largest history think tank.

“Students are more engaged than ever to find out how the war connects to them today,” said Jeremy Diamond, director of The Historica-Dominon Institute.

The Toronto-based think tank works to preserve and promote Canada’s military history. Its flagship remembrance initiative, The Memory Project, is celebrating 10 years of connecting school children with veterans.

Over the past decade, veterans have visited over 5,000 classrooms and reached over a million students. The last few years have been marked with staggering growth, with 2,000 visits between 2008 and 2011 alone.

That growth can be attributed to the students, who have been reaching out and searching for ways to meaningfully remember older generations of soldiers, according to Diamond.

“A lot of students in a lot of schools are planning their own Remembrance Days,” he said. “They are the ones that are leading on this and present them to their teachers.”

It’s a change that 23-year-old Jamie Lunn has noticed in the attitudes of young people as well.

Lunn, a War Amp, has long been involved in Operation Legacy, which sees young people like her go into classrooms to teach children about the importance of the sacrifice of fallen soldiers and veterans.

It’s a job Lunn says she has more help with these days.

“Our members of Operation Legacy have been more involved than ever in the past couple of years,” she says.

The reason for the increased interest? The onward rush of time, say both organizations.

“The First World War veterans are no longer able to be told by the men who fought in that war. We are now losing more and more traditional veterans every month,” says Lunn.

Diamond said it’s that urgency that is behind the institute’s project to collect stories of the Second World War.

Those stories hold so much power to connect with the next generation of Canadians that will someday be their only keepers, says Diamond.

He said when veterans tell teenagers about what it was like to be 17-years-old and be going off to war, it hits home.

“I think that when the connection is made. We know that it happens. We see the letters that are written, increased awareness in Remembrance earlier than we ever had.”

It also has the power to change the country, according to Diamond.

“There is a patriotism aspect to it that we are not used to in this country…We are starting to feel a bit more comfortable celebrating things that are Canadian,” he says. “Remembrance Day and be, I think it is very quickly becoming, one of those times where people can unite.”