Our Mission

The Testaments of Honour project was created to chronicle first-hand accounts of Canadian veterans on digital video, and to preserve their photographs, documents, and other artifacts from their lives to be used in education and culture, and shared with the families of the veterans in the Archive.

About Testaments of Honour Historical Archive

Over the past 15 years, the Testaments of Honour Historical Archive has created a singular collection on high-resolution digital video of interviews with Canadian veterans talking about their personal experiences in World War II.

Beginning in 1999, we travelled across the country interviewing men and women from all branches of the service. The Archive now contains 538 interviews on 975 tapes. The project also has acquired more than 12,000 photographs and 3,000 documents (journals, logs, correspondence from the veterans’ personal collections, as well as a few valuable artifacts.

We believe there is inestimable value for future generations in being able to meet our veterans through these first-person testaments. It is not just what the men and women say about their experiences, but the way in which they say it and what their faces reveal as they talk to us. These interviews are a singular way of connecting with our history and bringing it to life.

There is no other body of work that has the depth and scope of the Testaments Archive. We are determined to see these stories preserved and shared. Too often in past, we Canadians have come to realize the importance of listening to and preserving our history only in hindsight.

With the successful completion of the Testaments of Honour Digitization Initiative, we will have the opportunity to preserve our past in way that cannot be replaced, and will be able to be shared and studied for generations to come.