David Alexander and Ryan McManaman

Owen Sound Collegiate and Vocational Institute, Owen Sound (Ontario)

David Alexander and Ryan McManaman help their students create meaningful commemoration activities that are driven by historical thinking concepts. It is this powerful model of historical inquiry that is at the heart of the Owen Sound Collegiate and Vocational Institute War and Memory Legacy Project. The project utilized a treasure trove of letters written by soldiers to former OSCI student Minnie Wright. Using the letters, students gave Minnie a voice in which she asked questions of and spoke to soldiers who served and sacrificed during the Great War. In a special Lest We Forget project, grade ten history students researched 54 Canadian servicemen who were killed on June 6th, 1944. Intrinsically, students wanted to find out more about their soldier, his family, and what happened to him. A final highlight came when a Canadian Forces CC130 Hercules from RCAF 424 Squadron performed a memorial fly over of the school after students researched the lives of two former students who died tragically together while serving in the same Lancaster aircrew.