Evidence of meeting #11 for Veterans Affairs in the 40th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was teachers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Rob Clarke Conservative Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
Are you usually attending by yourself, or do you have someone else who goes with you?
Veteran Volunteer, Memory Project, Dominion Institute
I go by myself, but I always meet with the teacher beforehand. I also arrive half an hour to an hour early, to check all the equipment and so on. The teacher is always there as my helper.
Conservative
Rob Clarke Conservative Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
And do the presentations last between 45 minutes to an hour?
Veteran Volunteer, Memory Project, Dominion Institute
They last 45 minutes, depending on what the teacher likes and whether she wants more or less of a question period. If I'm going to, say, Leaside High School on Tuesday morning, I leave at 8 o'clock and I get home at 11:30. It takes the whole morning.
Conservative
Rob Clarke Conservative Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
Now, for each classroom presentation, do you take the time to record this?
Veteran Volunteer, Memory Project, Dominion Institute
Often they have their own students take a video camera picture of what happens.
Conservative
Rob Clarke Conservative Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
Right.
This is for the Dominion Institute, in regard to some further questions I have. How many veterans outside the province of Ontario have you interviewed, just off the top of your head, since this program began?
Managing Director, Memory Project, Dominion Institute
Out of the 1,000 we have in the digital archive, I'd say probably about 500 to 600 would be from Ontario and the rest would be scattered across Canada.
Conservative
Rob Clarke Conservative Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
Now, being a western boy, I'll ask how much involvement you have with western Canada.
Managing Director, Memory Project, Dominion Institute
In terms of our speakers' bureau, we have great support, especially in Vancouver and Victoria and throughout Alberta. They're two of the most active provinces. I'd say with the 1,500 speakers, western Canada would probably have about 300. It depends. We've been out to certain communities for our digital archive, and pretty much every or every other community for our speakers' bureau.
The digital archive was a project we worked on for about three or four years, and we hit several cities. We went out and did an Antiques Roadshow style of event, where we encouraged veterans to bring their artifacts, recorded their stories, digitized all their materials right on-site, and then we picked up the gear and the travelling road show went to another city. We hit western Canada with that tour, as well.
Conservative
Rob Clarke Conservative Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
How much funding has the Dominion Institute received specifically for the Memory Project?
Managing Director, Memory Project, Dominion Institute
We have received about $1.3 million from Veterans Affairs and probably another $600,000 from the Department of Canadian Heritage, so it's almost $2 million since 2001.
Conservative
Rob Clarke Conservative Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
You mentioned earlier that all the interviews with participants are being recorded. Are they being translated as well?
Managing Director, Memory Project, Dominion Institute
From time to time the events in the classrooms are recorded, but really they're being recorded by the teachers. We're not set up to be able to record the 700 to 800 visits a year that happen across Canada. The ones in the digital archive were where we specifically targeted veterans in different communities, recorded their stories over a phone line. At that time, they weren't translated, but we made a special effort to reach out to francophone veterans and communities and had a good number of French veterans' stories recorded in their native language and then transcribed on-site.
Executive Director, Dominion Institute
Right. And to the point--I guess this is kind of self-evident--we're a small charity. We're a project-based organization. The Memory Project has been our flagship program for many years. We've received excellent funding. We've had, really, no greater partner than the federal government for doing the work we do.
The funding has been tied to various aspects of the project, so we're able to continue or focus on one particular aspect of a project at a particular time. That might be the digital archive from 2002 to 2006. Now we're trying to engage the next generation of veterans in particular. We're part of a three-year funding agreement at the moment that is paid half by the Canadian studies program grant at the Department of Canadian Heritage, and half through Canada Remembers at Veterans Affairs Canada.
Conservative
Rob Clarke Conservative Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
Mr. MacDonell, I have to commend you and thank you and the other volunteers for actually taking the time to tell the stories. It's lost information that we have to maintain.
Thank you again.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Sweet
Thank you very much, Mr. Clarke.
I generally don't get the opportunity, but I'm going to take the liberty to ask you a couple of questions myself since everybody has had the opportunity to ask a question and we're going to be doing some committee business in very short order.
When you have a veteran go to a school, do you ask for a fee or a voluntary donation or anything to try to have some long-term sustainability for the project?
Managing Director, Memory Project, Dominion Institute
We don't. The project itself was designed originally and it's continued to operate as a free service for teachers. Sometimes teachers will provide...and I'm sure Mr. MacDonell has received these, whether it's a donation to the institute on behalf of a school or a thank you, gifts and the like. We create educational materials that we pass on for free to teachers, and the veterans themselves are not paid, outside of the fact that from time to time we provide a small per diem to them to come to events, to cover parking and stuff. In terms of anything other than that, we don't. It's a free service for the teachers, and we're very grateful for our veterans to be able to do this somewhat out of pocket with their time and some of their minor expenses.
Conservative
Managing Director, Memory Project, Dominion Institute
Since 2001. I think it was the summer of 2001. We started in that school year. That's when it was created, so it's been about eight years.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Sweet
I was very happy to hear your answer to Madam Foote about the fact that you would welcome any kind of help or partnership. I want to mention two. One is that we have the largest military tattoo in Hamilton, Ontario, and I hope you decide to contact them and capitalize on just having some material there, if not a presence.
Managing Director, Memory Project, Dominion Institute
Yes. We've been there before. It's a great event.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Sweet
Oh, okay. Going back to what you said earlier, that's your target, right?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Sweet
Of course, we also have Her Majesty's Canadian ship Haida there as well. I'm certain that some of your veterans must be navy boys or women--