Honouring Canada’s History Champions

Designed by teacher Michel Blades Bird, Keeping Tobacco Sacred is an initiative that fosters a reconnection to land, culture, and language for youth growing up in government care.

Elementary teacher Jacqueline Cleave led a project to make the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s ninety-four calls to action more accessible to younger learners.

Judette Dumel invited her Grade 7 students to discover the importance of immigration in Canadian history, particularly the Afro-Canadian diaspora. Composed of many different activities, the project encouraged students, among other things, to write a bibliographical account of a historical figure of the Afro-Canadian diaspora.

The Westwood Historical Society, a school organization led by teacher Kelly Hiebert and his students at Westwood Collegiate, has created a documentary on the rise of hate and antisemitism in Canada.

In collaboration with the Network School, the Montreal Holocaust Museum and the Monique Fitz-Back Foundation, Denise LeBlanc designed her project with the intention of raising the awareness of her Grade 5 and 6 students on the events surrounding the Holocaust and the concepts of antisemitism and racism.

For more than a decade, high school history teacher Mark Perry has guided his students in commemorative research projects that research key moments in the first and second world wars and share the stories of soldiers and veterans from their community.

Conceived and presented as a project that foregrounds Inuit voices, expertise, and engagement, the Textile Museum of Canada’s partnership with the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative made possible a process of collaboration with the Kinngait community, resulting in mutually beneficial research, educational programs, and an exhibition tour.

In Dammed: The Politics of Loss and Survival in Anishinaabe Territory, Brittany Luby offers a vivid and timely illustration of the embodied legacies of settler colonialism on the bodies, lands, and lives of Indigenous peoples.

The Honourable Murray Sinclair, C.C., M.S.C., is a former lawyer, judge, Canadian senator, and is currently the Chancellor of Queen’s University. Sinclair’s work in deepening awareness of Canada’s shared and difficult history, coupled with a relentless commitment to build a better country moving forward, has restored forgotten and suppressed truths of the past.

The Reach Gallery Museum initiated a collaborative, multidisciplinary partnership with a number of Stó:lō leaders and knowledge keepers in British Columbia to reclaim the memory of a lake that once stretched between present-day Abbotsford and Chilliwack, British Columbia.

When the COVID-19 pandemic was at full strength in Canada and required the isolation of its population, writer and journalist Janette Bertrand, profoundly affected by the fate and isolation of seniors, created a stimulating activity for them to write their memories while leaving a collective imprint of this pivotal time in our history.