Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for inviting me to appear before you today. As mentioned, my name is Caroline Dromaguet, I'm the director general of the Canadian War Museum. It is a pleasure to be here to talk about how commemoration fits into the activities of the Canadian War Museum and to give you an overview of our strategy for inspiring and educating Canadians, at home and abroad, in recognition of the service and sacrifice of all who have served.
The Canadian War Museum is Canada's national museum of military history. It acquires and maintains relevant artifacts for its national collection, and it disseminates knowledge through research, exhibitions and public programs. The museum is a venue and facilitator for informed discussion on military history.
Our mission is to promote public understanding of Canada's military history in its personal, national and international dimensions. In other words, we look at how war has affected Canadians as individuals, how it has shaped our country, and how, in times of war, Canadians have influenced world events. We do this through exhibitions, events, programs and partnerships.
This serves the museum and our audiences very well. Personal stories resonate at home and abroad, and facilitate engagement with history in a real and tangible way, whether our visitors are onsite at the museum or engaging with us virtually or on social media.
Although our mandate is not one of commemoration, many of our projects and initiatives are intertwined with the commemoration of important events in Canadian military history.
Since we last presented before this committee in 2011, the Canadian War Museum has completed a successful, multi-year program marking the centenary of the First World War. Exhibitions, public programs, educational initiatives and publications incorporated numerous personal stories, developing and encouraging new knowledge about the First World War.
The personal experiences of more than 40 Canadians are the basis of our current special exhibition, Forever Changed, one of the many initiatives we presented in 2020 to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
As with all of our projects, the exhibition reflects the experiences of a diverse range of Canadians within many different contexts.
The diversity of voices is also reflected in our ongoing collection of oral histories. More than 500 oral histories have been recorded to date, most of them capturing the voices of veterans from the Second World War to Afghanistan.
Partnerships are also critical to us. We collaborate regularly with a wide range of national and international partners—some of whom are on this call today—by contributing historical expertise, sharing artifacts from the national collection or partnering to host live and virtual events.
The challenges resulting from COVID-19 highlighted and accelerated the need to make more of our content available digitally. The War Museum was able to respond quickly, offering rich online exhibitions and resources as well as dynamic, relevant and engaging virtual programs reflecting the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
We also offered digital resources for our supply line discovery boxes, which support educators teaching the First and Second World Wars.
In November 2020, we launched a new online resource for Remembrance Day, providing materials that make it easier to produce lessons and ceremonies to commemorate the service of Canada's military personnel—in classrooms, at home, or in the wider community.
Engagement with our social media channels—where we share many personal stories and commemorative anniversaries with audiences around the world—has risen 17% over the past year.
Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, the Canadian War Museum remains a key national resource for the sharing of Canada's military history.
The museum continues to evolve and change in order to remain relevant to the 21st century. For example, we developed in 2017 a new gallery involving the conflicts in Afghanistan. We are also developing a framework to guide the renewal of the museum's galleries in response to demographic and societal changes in Canada. This renewal will include the addition of a new dimension to the presentation of Canada's military history to help explain our world in the 21st century.
Exhibitions, products and programs are all part of our mandate, which intertwines with commemoration.
I look forward to answering any questions you may have regarding the War Museum and its programming.
Thank you very much for your attention.