A Diary Entry From a Canadian Soldier

Here in PLP, we are still studying World War One. For our next project, we had to write a diary entry from the point of view of a soldier that actually fought. Using this website, we found real soldiers that fought in World War One. Then we had to analyze any primary sources that were attached to our soldier of choice. Using those primary sources, and any other research we had done, we had to write a diary entry from any time during the soldier’s life.

I ended up choosing a soldier named Talbot Mercer Papineau. img_1120  He seemed like a normal soldier but after I did more research, it turned out that he was related to Louis Joseph Papineau, a very famous figure from Canadian history. I also found out that he was the cousin of Henri Bourassa, someone we had studied very recently.

All of the information included in the diary is true, based on primary sources and other bits of information that I found. Since Papineau had written a newspaper entry on the war, I included an excerpt of it in my diary entry.

These are some of the primary sources that I used:

 

Talbot Mercier Papineau
Talbot Mercer Papineau
A picture of Papineau that was published in a newspaper
A picture of Papineau that was published in a newspaper
A letter that Papineau sent to his mother
A letter that Papineau sent to his mother
A form filled in by Papineau
A form filled in by Papineau

I tried to interprete those sources and determine out Papineau’s personality. I then tried to incorporate his personality into my diary entry.

Well, here is my diary entry:

Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge

This assignment helped me understand how to anazlyze primary sources and transfer the information into a different assignment.

*An interesting fact, Papineau was portrayed in the CBC film, The Great War, by none other than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

img_1121

*Note: The excerpt from the newspaper by Papineau is real and was found on this website.

 

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