129 Listening to just one interview with a Canadian veteran brings home the importance of oral history. Early on in an interview with Lance Corporal Blanche Bennett (nee Landry), we learn that she joined the Canadian Women’s Army Corps as a switchboard operator at age 19 (against her parents’ wishes), leaving P.E.I. for the first time to train in Halifax. Landry reflects on feeling lonely far from home, although she made friends and even met her future husband, Murray, a newly enlisted naval officer from Saskatchewan, in Halifax. Married in 1945, Blanche and Murray were partners for 61 years. They had three children and, from 1952 when Murray rejoined the military until his retirement in 1973, they became a military family, living in Belgium, France and Nova Scotia. Bennett stayed in such close contact with her own army cohorts that eight of them attended her 80th birthday celebration (almost twenty years ago). Asked why she enlisted, Bennett mused, “I think we did it to prove that we could do something — and you didn’t have to be wealthy and you didn’t have to be well-educated. Just did what had to be done. And you went and did it.” Hearing the details of military life – from contending with the uncertainties of war and being part of the military community to experiencing conflict overseas – highlights the importance of preserving these memories for future generations. Doing so now, and connecting with older veterans, takes on particular urgency with only 22,000 of the 1.1 million who served in the Second World War still living, and the youngest is 94. Blanche Bennett’s story is just the beginning of In Their Own Voices: Stories from Canadian Veterans and Their Families, an ambitious project that will build on the Museum’s already impressive collection of oral histories in a renewed effort to preserve the stories of Canadian veterans and their families. In Their Own Voices CanadianWar Museum’s Newest Oral History Collection Aims to Preserve the Stories of Canadian Veterans and Their Families Blanche Bennette (née Landry) Halifax 1945, Image courtesy Barbara Spence.
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