On the 75^th anniversary of the D-Day landings, Defining Moments Canada is honoured to offer educators around the country a series of FREE educational resources to help their students think critically about commemoration and the legacy of this defining Canadian moment. With the goal of having students create their own digital commemoration, our veteran interviews, inquiry-based lesson plans, storytelling resources, and vast array of supplementary material will have your students delving deeper than ever into D-Day and its implications for the people – and country – that lived it.
 
Get started with our curated list of veteran interviews, which feature 21 stories from veterans of all backgrounds. Alongside each video, you’ll find biographies, further information on their war service, and additional resources such as war diaries, archival photos and footage, infographics, statistics, and much more. We hope these will inspire your students to begin their own research into a “microhistory” of a remarkable man or woman who contributed, at home or abroad, to the success of D-Day.
 
Next, take a look at our dedicated educational resources: four lesson plans, created in collaboration with The Critical Thinking Consortium, as well as veteran research tips and resources for creating great stories using our 7 Sentence Story Structure. These resources provide both structure and guidance in the creation of your students’ digital commemorations.
 
Finally, get your students started on their own digital commemoration: they can create one using the resources above, and submit it to tzamozdra@canhist.ca for a chance to be featured on our website.
 
Defining Moments Canada will be collecting and sharing YOUR digital commemorations and veteran stories as of May 6^th – get in touch, and help us build a national mosaic of Canadian service during the Second World War.