Wednesday, September 3, 2014

'From the Prairies to the Trenches: Saskatchewan and the First Months of World War One, June 1914 - February 1915'

Me proudly mugging for the camera as we install our exhibit at the Legislature. Picture by the ever-radiant J. Fedorak.
Well, sadly, it looks like summer is slipping through our fingers. Usually my work is fairly low-key during the hot months, but this year it has been very busy indeed.

One thing that my unit was tasked to do during July was to create and install an exhibit at our Provincial Legislature in order to commemorate Canada's entry into the Great War, one hundred years ago. Even though we only had four weeks to pull it off I decided that we should be ambitious and create a video installation as I thought it would better showcase the various collections/media held by our archive. Anyway, it was all hands to the sweeps each day, but my team more than showed their mettle and I think they hit the ball right out of the park. I'm very proud of them and of what we managed to create under such a tight deadline. My hat is off to you Donald, Jaimie, Madeleine, Taras and Tim - thanks so much for your hard work.

So, without further ado here is our video exhibit (which also debuted on YouTube a few days ago). It is titled, 'From the Prairies to the Trenches: Saskatchewan and the First Months of World War One, June 1914 - February 1915'. I invite you to check it out and if you like it please forward it on to others who may be interested. 


Note: I recommend turning on Closed Captioning / Subtitles as one of the interviews is with a WWI veteran which was recorded in 1975 and so can be a bit of a challenge to hear in parts. We will be creating follow-up videos for each year of the war so, rest assured, I will be pestering you all to view them when they are each released. 

Thanks very much for taking the time to visit!