The Historic Sites Association is welcoming a variety of submissions from students in grades 7 through 12 on how WWI has affected their lives.

Executive Director Jane Severs says instead of imagining what life was like for soldiers, their families and the world as a whole at the time, they’re looking for students to express how the lives we live today have been affected by events more than 100 years ago.

Severs says WWI sparked massive global changes, the impact of which are still being felt today.

She says it destroyed old empires and created new nation states, it led to the Russian Revolution and the rise of Soviet Communism, and put Newfoundland and Labrador on the path to Confederation with Canada. Not to mention changes in culture, art, fashion, music and design, as well as the invention of things like Pilates, Kleenex, blood banks and drones all of which are still being used today.

Students are being invited to express how WWI has affected their lives in a variety of ways, including through a short video, visual art, song, poem or interpretive dance and submit it to the Historic Sites Association.

Sixteen students will be chosen to head to Beaumont Hamel in France, all expenses paid, to attend the annual July 1st Memorial ceremony and tour WWI battlefields in France and Belgium. The deadline is May 3.

More information can be found by contacting director@historicsites.ca