The UCDSB’s We Were Here Project is a concept. It is also an evolution of a concept. Let me explain:

Over 20 years ago, Blake Seward discovered opportunity at the nexus of his personal and professional life as an educator. His fascination with history became personal and emerged in his family. He confronted the gap in a forgotten family tragedy, a scar left by the Great War. He asked, how did it come to pass that we forgot the service and sacrifice of our own blood? Later, standing at a Remembrance Day ceremony in his hometown, he recognized that same forgetting in a ceremony meant to commemorate the fallen. There was pomp and circumstance, poppies and the Last Post, and the roll call of names. Seward asked, who were these men? That question, wondering at the men behind the names, the lives that led and fell on the fields of France and Belgium so far away, so long ago, began a career defining shift to developing a learning experience that would place students at the centre of knowing the names, and following their footsteps through the careful reading of service files, the paper trails kept to document the lives of those who left the shores of Canada, many never to return, in an event we now call The First World War.

Then it was The Great War – named for its magnitude in how it shaped the world; the “War to End all Wars”. It didn’t succeed.

“Lest We Forget”, the project that Seward built with students, is an approach to learning history. Students interrogate primary evidence including service files, war diaries, period newspapers, letters, photographs, and construct a story of a life lived. We Were Here connects the approach to the communities in which the students live: names are taken off honour rolls in schools, cenotaphs in their towns and villages, and students follow the puzzle as it reveals itself. Students work with local historical societies and archives to further their understanding of the person they are researching to include pre-war life, family, vocations: as so many students remark, knowing the life beyond the war makes the connection profound and personal.

Mason Black is the catalyst for bringing the research project into the 21st century. Once students have constructed a story, they are encouraged to tell the story of a life in ways that make sense to them. Students contribute their research to a national data portal, develop apps to share their learning on a global stage, and incorporate contemporary storytelling and artistic mediums to share their learning beyond the walls of school. Following the student desire to take their research deeper, Black and Seward collaborated with the UCDSB to construct Mobile Archival Digital Labs (MAD Labs), state of the art archival technology that students use to digitize community archives as they learn the history of the communities they live in. An object, photograph, map or blueprint becomes the catalyst for wonder and storytelling.

Beginning in October 2024, the journey that begins in the towns and villages of Eastern Ontario, now reaches to Europe: students stand beside the headstones of soldiers they researched in postcard size cemeteries scattered all over France and Belgium and beyond. There, students speak of the life that led to the headstone. They read from stories they have written, poetry they have crafted, share art, artefacts, and the emotions that ultimately surface while trying to understand the events that led to this place – for themselves and the soldiers they are here to commemorate.

They were here.

We are here.

We Were Here.

“Here”, as in a place, a time, an event, a present, a past – as in people, standing on ground, in service of purpose. This is history.

We.

Were.

Here.