The Juno Beach Centre offers this collection of online archives, websites, and Canadian history resources designed to help Educators incorporate primary research and learning in their classrooms. You will find useful links to other institutions and projects relating to the Second World War, tools for researching Canadian military records, and First Nations culture.
Juno Beach Centre Association
Support kit for teachers Primary or Secondary
Description: This kit aims to support you before, during, and after your class’ visit to the Juno Beach Centre. It provides a detailed description of the Educational Program, the museum’s offerings, and practical information regarding the visit and making a reservation. The kit also offers suggested activities to help prepare for and follow-up on your visit, as well as a page summarizing our different educational program offers.
Who Tells the Story of Dieppe?
Description: Who Tells the Story of Dieppe? explores how the events and purpose of the Dieppe Raid change based on who is telling the story. Whether it’s military propaganda, testimonies from veterans, or contemporary memorials, representations of the raid are defined by those who are presenting it. This line of inquiry is at the centre of this 4-lesson education package adapted from our From Dieppe to Juno exhibition at the Juno Beach Centre.
From Vimy to Juno: Canadians Through Two World Wars
Description: To what extent is identity (personal and national) shaped by conflict? This is the question found at the centre of the 5 lessons that make up the education package for From Vimy to Juno: Canadians Through Two World Wars. If used as a whole, the lessons will guide students through a journey to understand identity – that of themselves, their nation and the historical actors that shaped it.
From Vimy to Juno (2017-2019)
Description: From Vimy to Juno offers educators a collection of lesson plans and resources to help improve and enrich students’ military history experiences, both in and outside of the classroom.
Partnerships
Juno75: Above and Beyond (Defining Moments Canada)
Description: The Juno75: Above and Beyond commemoration project aims to engage young people in developing an appreciation for the many individuals who contributed to the success of Juno Beach and the Battle of Normandy. Through research into the life and contributions of an individual, young people will be able to create meaningful digital commemorations in honour of those individuals.
VE Day 75: Normandy to Netherlands (Defining Moments Canada)
Description: VE Day 75: Normandy to Netherlands encourages students and teachers to use an inquiry approach to learning, guided by historical thinking concepts to research, create and share story maps that address the question, “How did the contributions of Canadians help secure victory in Northwest Europe and the Liberation of Holland in 1944-45?”
Honour, Educate, Remember Teacher Resource and Honour, Learn, Remember Student Resource (No Stone Left Alone)
Description: The purpose of this educational resource is to foster that connection, by linking personal stories and reflections from those students who have already experienced the No Stone Left Alone Remembrance Day program to stories and contexts around the veterans and soldiers they honour.
Second World War
Studying Genocide guide
Description: The Studying Genocide guide provides teachers with several resources and tools to learn more about nine genocides of the 20th century. It also helps teachers better understand the genocidal process and consider actions that can be taken to prevent its recurrence.
Wartime Canada’s Education
Description: Wartime Canada’s Education section provides lesson plans that help effectively utilize our comprehensive collection of documents in the classroom to meet a variety of provincial curriculum expectations
Spirit Over Steel: A Chronology of the Second World War
Description: This FREE 566-page ebook records day-by-day events and insights about the war in all theatres by all belligerents. Spirit over Steel is not just a chronology of the war– it is a work of prose literature in its literary style, with injections of humour. It was written by John Thompson, a defence & security expert and historian, and edited and produced by Eric Morse.
Citizen Sailors Virtual Cenotaph (Naval Reserve Association of Canada)
Description: Sadly, the stories of the 1769 Canadian Naval Reservists who lost their lives in naval service between 1939 and 1947 remain largely unknown to the Naval Reserve Divisions where they enlisted. The Citizen Sailors Virtual Cenotaph project was created to bring these stories home. This volunteer initiative aims to provide Canadians with a deeper understanding of their fellow citizens’ histories from across the country and to honour the citizen sailors who perished during World War II. The project is seeking volunteer researchers, proofreaders, and translators to help with this important endeavour.
1939-1945: A Soldier’s War (CBC Archives)
Description: Presents radio clips illustrating life on the battlefields of World War II. Includes reports from the front, dramatizations and messages home from soldiers, as well as educational activities for teachers.
Canada’s Untold Stories: WWII (Scotia Heritage Productions)
Description: Each video in this playlist spotlights a unique aspect of Canada’s role in the Second World War. With subjects ranging from specific veteran biographies to Canada’s nationwide contributions to the war effort, these videos showcase a diversity of wartime experiences from a distinctly Canadian perspective.
Educators – Resources for the classroom
Description: Veterans Affairs Canada’s Public Education Program has created, with the advice and assistance of Canadian educators, teaching resources which bring a uniquely Canadian perspective to the history of 20th century conflicts and Canada’s involvement in them.
Heroes Remember
Description: Veterans Affairs Canada has recorded countless hours of video and audio conversations with veterans of the First World War and Second World War and the Korean War. These interviews offer rare and personal memories of those individuals who lived the experience, first-hand. Each interview has a story attached and makes up a bigger picture. Each piece makes it possible to tell a nation’s history through the eyes of those who served.
National Film Board of Canada: D-Day
Description: A site on the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings includes several NFB titles, available for viewing online, on the events of June 6, 1944.
Canadian War Museum
Description: Games & Activities for Children.
Democracy at War: Canadian Newspapers and the Second World War
Description: Democracy at War: Canadian Newspapers and the Second World War is the Canadian War Museum’s fully searchable digitized collection of 144,000 contemporary newspaper clippings that report on the events of the Second World War as that great conflict unfolded.
The Canadian Battle Series
Description: The Directorate of History and Heritage (DHH) is pleased to present the Canadian Battle Series, a series of 17 brochures each detailing an historic battle in which Canadians participated. These documents were prepared by military historians for the Canadian War Museum (CWM). They are available electronically on this site in French only but a printed version can be ordered in English.
HISTORICA CANADA
Description: HISTORICA CANADA is the largest, independent organization dedicated to Canadian history, identity, and citizenship. The site presents Canadian history, heritage, geography, and culture for students, teachers, history activists, and average Canadians. Contains teacher resources, biographies of Canadians, the Canadian Heritage Minutes as well as the Memory Project.
– Heritage Minutes, Archie McNaugthon, North Shore Regiment of New Brunswick
The Memory Project – Stories of the Second World War Digital Archive
Description: The Memory Project provides every living Second World War veteran with the opportunity to share their memories through oral interviews and digitized artefacts and memorabilia available on this website. The Memory Project is an initiative of the Historica-Dominion Institute.
Open Hearts – Closed Doors: The War Orphans Project (Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre)
Description: Following the Second World War, a group of young Jewish orphans immigrated to Canada from the devastation of Europe. “Open Hearts – Closed Doors: The War Orphans Project” is an online teaching exhibit that chronicles the lives of these orphans as they emerged from the events of the Holocaust into displaced person camps and eventually to new lives in Canda. This multi-media website uses the orphans’ own words and artefacts as well as primary documents and photographs to provide students with a powerful learning experience about the Holocaust and the broader history of Canadian immigration during the 20th Century. The site provides extensive support for students & teachers in middle & secondary school, social studies and language arts classrooms. The teacher’s guide, web links, maps, biblio-videographies and pop-up glossary terms can be browsed online or downloaded as printable classroom materials. The bilingual site offers French teachers a valuable new resource for Holocaust Education.
The Canadian Wartime Experience: The Documentary Legacy of Canada at War
Description: This site is maintained by the University of Manitoba. It provides free access to a collection of several thousand digitised primary source materials: such as documents, newspaper articles, letters, photographs and prints relating to the experience of Canada and Canadians during various wars from 1899 to 1970. They include the Boer War (1899-1903); First World War (1914-1918), Second World War (1939-1945); Korean War (1950-1953) and Vietnam War (1957-1975). They cover information relating to military movements, battles and training well as oral history accounts from soldiers and servicemen/women. The site also includes a section for educators with suggested classroom activities. Rights information is available from the web site.
Canada’s Contribution to the Second World War: History Unit (Queen’s Faculty of Education & Canada’s Digital Collections)
Description: This excellent Grade 10 history unit on Canada in the Second World War is a useful learning resource for Ontario teachers, as well as teachers in all provinces and territories of Canada. The lessons and activities can easily be adapted to different grade levels to meet curriculum requirements as needed.
Britannica Online Second World War Study Guide
Description: Encyclopaedia Britannica’s Second World War Study Guide has six student activities for use by high school history or social studies classes, or by students and parents at home. The activities are self-guided and promote critical thinking. They are also interactive, inviting students to locate, evaluate, and compare sources of information on the Internet. The online encyclopedia offers a wealth of information and resources (maps, weapons & tactics, newsreel footage, photos, war documents including D-Day assault plans, oral histories, published memoirs, interactive) about the Second World War and the D-Day landings.
Planning game for the preparations for D-Day
Description: This online game for students helps them understand the decisions made to prepare for D-Day.
BBC Online: World War II
Description: Covers various topics of the war such as campaigns and battles, politics, home front, and the holocaust. Multimedia zone offers interactive maps, photographs, animations, interactive games and audio and video clips.
Homefront 1939-1945
Description: This interactive UK National Archives Learning Curve exhibition examines life in Britain during the Second World War. Sections revolve around essential questions for students to answer and feature diaries, activities, worksheets, a timeline, and video.
The Avalon Project: Second World War documents (Yale University)
Description: An extensive collection of important primary documents from the Second World War including agreements, declarations, addresses, and conferences are made available on this site. Features a search engine for finding documents not listed on the main page.
Hyper War
Description: Hyper War is a “hypertext” history of the Second World War and features diplomatic and political documents. The content is made up, primarily, of “public domain” (non-copyright) materials in English; Official government histories (United States and British Commonwealth/Empire); Source documents (diplomatic messages, Action Reports, logs, diaries, etc.); and Primary references (manuals, glossaries, etc). Wherever possible, hyperlinks between these histories and documents have been included.
Duty, Valour, Sacrifice
Description: This project is a multi-part computer simulation that allows students to go through the experiences of a Canadian soldier, a sailor and an airman in WW2.
Researching Canadian Soldiers’ Military Records
Library and Archives Canada
Description: Canadian Military Personnel Records.
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Description: The British Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintains records and registers of the 1.7 million members of UK and Commonwealth forces who were killed in the two World Wars and other conflicts. Their register can also be searched for details of the 67,000 Commonwealth civilians who died as a result of enemy action during the Second World War. Visitors can search the database for details of grave site, date of death, age, address of a close relative, etc.
Canadian War Brides
Description: The authoritative source of information on the Canadian war brides of WWII. The story of the Canadian war brides and their journey to Canada is one of the most fascinating and romantic of the Second World War. Why nearly 45,000 British and European women would leave behind everything that was familiar to start a new life in post-war Canada is a story worth telling. This website draws together the various components of the Canadian War Bride story to provide a compelling portrait of the human experience.
My Grandfather’s War
Description: The aim of My Grandfather’s War is to provide the descendants of Canada’s military heroes with detailed information about the service of their relatives. The founder of the website, Kim Mathieson, is also able to offer general genealogical research services.
Indegenous Peoples of Canada
Learning resources about First Nations, Inuit and Métis across Canada