The World Remembers
A new display now in the lobby of Mills Library is paying tribute to the more than one million soldiers who lost their lives in 1918, the final year of World War One. Image is from the Gordon Parkinson Archive housed in McMaster University Library’s William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections. Private Gordon (top row, third from right) was killed on October 1, 1918.
A new exhibit now on display in the lobby of Mills Library is paying tribute to those who lost their lives in 1918, the final year of World War One.
The World Remembers displays the names of 1,003,000 soldiers, nurses and other military personnel from nations on both sides of the conflict who were killed in 1918, or died after the war of wounds or of diseases contracted in the war.
The display will run for 12.8 hours each day from September 11 until November 11, 2018. Each name is programmed to appear at a precise day, hour and minute.
The World Remembers was created to honour those killed in the First World War from Canada and also from fifteen participating nations to both remember those who died, and to honour the shared histories of those nations that were involved in the conflict, which was among the deadliest in human history.
The names of 23,731 Canadians will appear in the display, along with the names of those from the UK, France, Germany, the United States, Turkey, Belgium, Australia, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, South Africa, Italy, New Zealand, Slovenia, China and the former British Indian Army.
This commemoration is the fifth of five displays – one for each year of the war – that shows the names of those killed between 1914 – 1918 in the 100thyear of their deaths.
The exhibit was created by actor and Governor General’s Performing Arts Award winner, R.H. Thompson and is being displayed at 60 locations across Canada including museums, schools, libraries, universities, and community centres, as well as 20 locations internationally.
