The Sarnia War Remembrance Project is complete.
Retired teacher Tom Slater said the third edition, which has two volumes and over 1,200 pages, is a record of Sarnia's contributions and sacrifices made during wartime.
"The last version I released was in 2014, and shortly thereafter, I had a number of family members of the fallen approach me in wanting to share their stories of their lost loved ones and the library and archives started to release records of World War I soldiers," he said. "I just kept digging and got to World War II fallen soldier records."
Slater was overcome by the information available now.
"As soon as you start opening up John Smith's service file, well now I have to go through every single one of them. It just got bigger and bigger. I started in 2012, so last November, I kind of finished writing and it's done now. There will be no fourth version."
Slater said the stories "struck" him.
"A lot of them signed up when they were 17 or 18-years-old, and they're choosing to go to war. They left behind moms and dads, brothers and sisters, some of them were just married, some of them even had young children, and yet they made the decision to go overseas and fight for freedoms and rights, and democracies, and saving the oppressed and that always struck me."
He often tries to put himself in their shoes.
"I always think of myself as a 17 or 18-year-old. Would I be willing to do that? Or me as a parent, and my son or daughter is overseas and I don't know what they're going through, what they're experiencing and in some cases you just get a telegram that says your son is missing or reported killed, and that's all you get."
He believes the lack of information would have been incredibly difficult.
"For a lot of these parents, they never had that final closure. They never got to see a body. Never got to find the details of how my son died, or how did my husband die, what was he going through, where is he buried, what were those experiences like. So, that's got to be tough."
Slater said anyone can read the books on the city's website.
