Hello, internet.

Recently, we’ve been making podcasts to show our learning about World War One. We were each asked to choose one soldier who fought in WWI, tell a story about their life, and answer the driving question: How did WWI shape Canada’s identity as a nation?

The soldier I chose to focus on was a man called Herbert Peterson. He disappeared in a battle in 1917, and his bones were found, identified and buried almost a century later. This story can be seen as a literal example of the way World War One has left us with “skeletons”; consequences and effects of the war that have not fully gone away even today.

In the process of making this podcast, I did research, wrote a script, and recorded a version with that script before realizing that I wasn’t telling the story the way I wanted to be telling it.

My original script started off as follows:

Hi. So, today we’ll be talking about World War One, and more specifically about the story of a soldier called Herbert Peterson.

Private Herbert Peterson was born in Scranton, Kansas, on December 18, 1895, to Julia and Charles G. Peterson. A little less than 21 years later, in Calgary, Alberta on February 22, 1916, he enlisted to go to war. On the day of his enlistment, notes were made of everything from his hair colour to the three small scars on his upper arm, and after a medical examination, he was declared fit to serve as a soldier. He served in the Alberta regiment of the Canadian Infantry.

While the information I started out with was interesting, and introduced Herbert Peterson, I thought it made the story feel a little boring as it played out. Eventually, I decided to start off the podcast with the interesting part of the story, then go back and explain the backstory later. I also decided to drop the introduction altogether, and I think the podcast is better for it.

Toodles.