Photo - M. Farfan
(Sherbrooke, June 25, 2025) – The Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network (QAHN) is proud to announce that Bryan McGaw and Jacob Coleman of The Vimy Foundation – Canadian Centre for the Great War (VF-CCGW) Heritage Support Team have been chosen as recipients of QAHN’s very first Young Volunteer Awards. This award has been created to bring attention to the contributions of a group of volunteers who tend to be overlooked in favour of older individuals, but who are nevertheless essential to the future of so many heritage organizations: youth.
Bryan and Jacob (who could not attend the awards ceremony) have become an integral part of the VF-CCGW, in Montreal, bringing their skills to assist with translation, basic collection care, research, writing, photography, event support, and digital product testing. They have helped us to “better understand the Anglophone community in the early 20th Century and the people that participated in the First World War from the City of Montreal,” writes Ada Chan of the VF-CCGW.
“Bryan is assisting us in finding key locations within the City of Montreal that played a significant role relating to the First World War,” Chan says. “His time and effort put into examining archival records helped us realize local efforts such as Westmount Soldier’s Wives League and locations where the war was locally commemorated.” Jacob, Chan says, “assisted us in finding the service files related to commemorated soldiers who were parishioners at local churches. His knowledge of data analysis helped us find new ways to learn about the soldiers from our city, their connections to the English community and how the demographic reflected Canada’s population at the time.”
Over the past two years, Jacob and Bryan’s passion for local heritage and knowlege for public history have helped reveal how the efforts of the Anglophone community impacted and contributed to the landscape of Montreal during and after the First World War. Bryan has a physically demanding full-time job that starts earlier than most 9-5 positions, yet he still managed to find time to volunteer with the VF-CCGW two weekday afternoons every week. “Since the pandemic,” Chan says, “it is difficult to find and often rare to see young volunteers under the age of 30 who are willing to selflessly donate time to a cause.”
For his part, even while completing his doctoral studies, Jacob has volunteered with the Heritage Team weekly amid research, writing, and part-time jobs,” Chan says.
Bryan McGaw and Jacob Coleman are among this year’s five volunteer recognition award winners selected in honour of QAHN’s 25th anniversary year, and in recognition of their contributions to the preservation and promotion of Anglophone heritage across Quebec.