Thread: Friends of Veterans (Canada)

TheRecord.com - Local - Archivist captures stories of Canada's veterans

Randy Young is travelling across Canada to record war veterans telling their stories before they die.

Young's plan is to create an online video library, where young people can view memories of past wars. It's for a federal charity called Friends of Veterans Canada, inspired in part by the Second World War service of Kitchener veteran Harry Watts.

"The young people don't know what these guys did for us," says Young, 47. "Their story is so important. It's all about collecting a little bit of Canadian history, and passing it on to the young people."

Watts, 85, delivered dispatches by motorcycle in battlefields across Europe. He volunteered after seeing news of Nazis burning books. "There's so many people in Canada that really have no idea what some of these volunteers went through," Watts says.

In Italy, Watts dove for cover beneath a tank as shells dropped around him. A German sniper once took aim at him. The bullet sounded like a bee buzzing around his head. In the Netherlands, the damage inflicted by German soldiers stunned him. He remembers wires torn from walls, bathtubs shattered, bicycles crushed, boats blown apart by grenades.

Watts told his own story in The Dispatch Rider, a self-published memoir.

Young toured eastern Canada by motorhome this summer, meeting veterans and recording their stories. He returned home to London and plans to tour western Canada next summer. Tour operator Jerry Van Dyke has helped sponsor the charity.

This fall, students are invited to make recordings of veterans during Remembrance Day addresses, for submission to the library. Details can be found online at Friends of Veterans Canada

Unfortunately peoples' awareness is often only triggered when news articles mention "the last survivor of X" or "few remaining members of Y" or "Z group finally getting recognition". And as I have found on geneological sites, the veterans often didn't even tell their families what they did or experienced.