Remember the people. Not just the numbers or battles.

This weekend marks 100 years since the First World War ended. And when we reflect, we often turn to the scale of the war-millions of people, dozens of nations, theatres spanning the globe, four-plus years of conflict-more than we reflect on the fact that every dead soldier had a name and every name had a story. But if we want to honour their sacrifice, that’s what we need to focus on.

More than 66,000 Canadians died in the war. To mark this Remembrance Day, Maclean’s magazine printed more than 66,000 unique magazine covers – each one dedicated to a person who lost their life fighting for Canada. The logistics of that are impressive, but what’s more interesting is what’s happened since the issue hit newsstands: Ordinary Canadians are digging into the stories of the soldiers on their copies, and finding threads that span the country, bring families together with their lost relatives, and should cause us all to consider how we think about war on Remembrance Day.

GUEST: Shannon Proudfoot, Maclean’s

 

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