First World War centenary marked by extraordinary Toronto project
The world is gathering to remember the dead soldiers of nine different countries who fought in the First World War.
The World Remembers is a Toronto-based project that is sharing the names of people who were killed in the First World War. What makes this project special is that it includes soldiers from across nine different countries, and the British Indian army, as well as nurses and other workers who died in the war.
TWR is remembering these people as individuals, projecting the names of the fallen onto screens at locations around Toronto.
The names are accompanied by the person’s country of origin.
“We’ve remembered very honourably for 99 years, in the collective, which is general. We remember ‘them’. And memory becomes far more powerful, and poignant, and focused, when you remember Robert, and William, and Emily, and Jacques, and Emil and Stefan. If you remember their names, you start to be specific,” said Robert H. Thomson, a producer of the TWR project.
“It doesn’t matter what country they were from, I think that’s one of the most impressive things about it,” said Martha Jackson, a citizen of Toronto who has been indexing war memorials in local schools. “Under the ground, soldiers are all the same. I mean, in other words when they’re dead, their nationality, […] it’s almost meaningless.”
The project has been in the works for over three and a half years, and is finally ready to be shown to the public. TWR began projecting the names on Oct. 20 at Toronto’s City Hall and other locations, and is open to the public.
While politics and money have played a large part in the organization’s quest to find the names and stories of the dead, data has also been a point of struggle. Finding the data to create the TWR project gave Thomson several hurdles to overcome.
“I try to develop a kind of three-pronged network […] and one is through the government, the official source. The second is through interested individuals. So say in the Czech Republic, interested individuals in the Czech Republic who go ‘ooh, that’s an idea’ and they like that, and they can help us approach their government. And then the third approach is into usually the university, or archival community, historical community. Saying this is a chance to actually articulate history, and to upgrade your archives,” said Thomson.
Not only is TWR remembering soldiers, but the project is also sharing the stories of the women who died in the war as well. One of the most interesting stories about these women is that in Canada, 67 women were killed, and only 65 were nurses.
“This was not a women’ world, to be you know, running oilers and steamers, in the First World War. But I know, because I think I’ve got the list! Two of the merchant navy deaths are women,” said Thomson, of the women who were in active duty and were not nurses. He also said that the stories of these women are not yet told, and that he’s not sure if they were masquerading as men while on board these ships, or if they were allowed to be women while in service.
A huge benefit of the project is that people are able to access the names on the website, and are able to contribute the names of their family to the project.
“Those connections are really what we need, and this is of course, a marvelous way to do it, and the fact that people just come right in here and see this, is wonderful,” said Jackson, outside the Cube in the Toronto reference library.
The project is a registered charity in Canada, and is financed by donations and the support of nations that have contributed to the project.
To view the names, you can go to the TWR website or visit the Toronto Public Library, who will be hosting the name projecting until Nov. 11. Other locations to view the names can also be found on the website.
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