Michael Petrou is Historian, Veterans’ Experience, at the Canadian War Museum. He previously worked as a foreign correspondent, reporting from across the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia. Petrou has won three National Magazine Awards and the Ottawa Book Award. He was the 2017-18 Martin Wise Goodman Canadian Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and is currently an adjunct research professor in the Department of History and the School of Journalism at Carleton University. Petrou has a doctorate in modern history from the University of Oxford and a master’s in Atlantic Canada studies from Saint Mary’s University, where he was a graduate research fellow at the Gorsebrook Research Institute.
Michael Petrou is leading the oral history project In Their Own Voices at the Canadian War Museum. This project presents the veteran’s experiences during their military services and these experiences shaped the lives of veterans and their loved ones, and how those veterans in turn have shaped Canada. Several veterans from Atlantic Canada are featured, including Mi’kmaw historian and community leader Donald Julien (who has an honorary degree from SMU); a 101-year-old Merchant Marine veteran from Newfoundland, a lovely 101-year-old woman from Prince Edward Island who served in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps, and at least two Atlantic Canadian veterans of Afghanistan.