This London Student used an art project to bring her great-grandmother's WW I story to life

This Remembrance Day, students at Lester B. Pearson School for the Arts are creating pieces honouring women who served during World War I. Now these pieces are currently on display at the Royal Canadian Regiment Museum here in London, and one of the students has a personal connection to her project. My great-grandma's name was Sonia K. Finan, and she was in the Air Force, and she was an airwoman. She would perform tasks so that the pilots could fly and fight in the war. Well, my papa, he thought that it would be good for me to learn more about my family. And when this unit got introduced, I thought that it was a great time to learn more about her. I got a photo of her in her uniform and I painted it and I I collaged the Quilt of Valor that she received for serving the Air Force behind her. Yeah, I felt very proud. My family was very proud and they thought it was super awesome. At no point do you expect somebody is going to discover or find information on a family member to make that project even more relevant but in Gwen's case that's exactly what happened and it was amazing to see and just again it really honours not just the women that we were looking at but it honours the the project in terms of what we hope to achieve. We know that the stories that are being told about our veterans more so are based on third-party accounts. The living histories that were once available to us are now told in other ways and to see our students telling those stories in their own way is really a unique way to continue honouring our veterans.