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I am a volunteer for a project called the National Inventory of Canadian Military Memorials (NICMM). This project is an attempt to catalogue every military memorial across Canada. We want to record information about all the existing memorials since no level of government has ever kept track of what memorials exist, where they are and how they are being taken care of. We hope to catalogue not just the major monuments usually found near government buildings, but also the smaller memorials such as plaques, or stained glass windows, or certificates often located in churches, schools, community halls and public buildings. We hope to capture all the names listed on these memorials in order to build a proper database of those courageous souls who lost their lives for the freedom of Canada. We require detailed photographs of each memorial, so we can transcribe the text on each memorial and provide a digital database of this information for research and historical purposes. Through my genealogical research I came across the NICMM site and started photographing any memorial I came across. As I started collecting materials, I decided to start my own web site in parallel with the NICMM web site mostly to handle the large volume of information that cannot be held in the national database. This web site is meant to be a supplement to the DND web site, not a replacement. Whenever I complete the work on a memorial, it will be sent to the primary site. This site allows me to keep track of my on-going work, and let others know what sites I have completed beyond the DND site listing. Always check the National Inventory of Canadian Military Memorials ( http://www.dnd.ca/hr/dhh/memorial/engraph/home_e.asp?cat=2) web site along with this site. incomplete. This site only covers the sites found in ONTARIO at this time. I have a large collection from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to organize and will add them to the site over time. Whenever I travel, I try to see if there is a memorial in every town I go through. When you look at a map, a village of 2,000 looks the same as a village that is 10 houses around an intersection. I can now say without question that there is no military memorial in Terra Cotta, Ontario. But, unless I am going to travel up and down every street in the village of Terra Cotta (which I did), it is possible that I will have missed a memorial in some of the towns that I have been through. I am doing this on a voluntary basis, and do have a real job. I will try to keep this site up to date as I can so that anyone else helping on this project has to waste time visiting a site already catalogued. Not to dissuade you from visiting the military memorials in your area. In fact I recommend it. When you are driving around this country, pay attention for a memorial when go through a town. You will find them right in the middle of town, or in a park, or by the river, or on the side of the road between point A and point B. The variety and beauty of some of the memorials I have seen have been inspiring and moving. I do hope that in time people will start looking around there town and noticing that there is a statue, a cairn, or a plaque that mentions the name or names of someone from their very town, who made the ultimate sacrifice because they believed in the freedom of people everywhere on this little planet. I also hope that by looking at these names, people will ask some questions about their family and their friends, so we can hear the real stories of these people who fought to help keep Canada free. If you think you would like to help on this project, please read through the site and if that doesn’t scare you away, please send me an email at the address below. I will recommend to anyone hoping to help to have a digital camera. I have over 2000 photographs in my files already and that would have been pretty expensive to get developed. A digital camera allows me to take as many pictures as I want of a site, but I can edit and clean up or deleted photos at any time. Also sending digital photos is definitely easier than scanning in real photos. If you use a regular camera, please review the page on Standards for Cataloging a Memorial to minimize the number of pictures required to complete a site. If you can help, THANKS. Derek Pullen
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