Over five days in November 1944, the Algonquin Regiment played a pivotal role in the capture of the tiny Dutch town of Welberg. In 2018, twenty Canadian university students returned to the site as part of an experiential learning course focused on the Regiment’s warpath from Point 140 to the Kusten Canal. Throughout the program, students both ‘walked the ground’ and engaged with contemporary communities in order to better understand past evens and consider the construction of historical meaning and memory.

This talk brings together three of the course’s facilitators: Anna Pearson (York University), Stephen Connor (Nipissing University) and Robert Catsburg (Welberg Liberation Memorial Foundation) to explore ways in which this hybrid of traditional and experiential learning introduced university students to a shared historical and cultural heritage.