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Toronto’s Great War Attic is part of the First World War programming produced by Museums & Heritage Services in the city’s Culture division. As an oral history project it provides moving insights into the First World War that can’t be found in formal histories or conventional museum collections. During a dozen events across the city in the fall of 2014 to which people were invited to bring items they treasured that were related to the conflict, the project collected almost one hundred stories. In a modest way they show the broad impact of the war. While the storytellers are all from Toronto or the GTA, the memories were rooted in Canada, Great Britain, Europe, the Caribbean, and Siberia. From among them, ten were chosen to be featured on videos now found at this link: Toronto’s Great War Attic, Short Documentary Films A poetry volume that shatters a stereotype, an autograph book that bonds a woman with her late father, and a series of letters that gives a new bittersweet sense of family are just a few of the keepsakes and stories revealed in the ten videos. They were directed, edited, and filmed by Juan Baquero, in consultation with Museums & Heritage Services. Mail: 260 Adelaide St. E., Box 183, Toronto, M5A 1N1 e-mail: info@fortyork.ca
School programs are also being produced as part of the Great War Attic for launch in September in support of the major nationwide commemoration in April 2017 that will be focused on Vimy. Sandra Shaul was the production manager for Toronto’s Great War Attic.
In the first video in the series, Darin Wybenga, librarian for the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation, tells of the serendipitous return of a book of poetry carried into war by Lt Cameron Brant, great-great-grandson of Mohawk chief Joseph Brant. A member of the Canadian expeditionary Force, Lt Brant died early in the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915. website: www.fortyork.ca The Fife and Drum 9
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