West Island student off to Europe after winning Beaverbrook Vimy Prize

Stanford Li, a 16-year-oldstudent from Beaconsfield,is headedto Great Britain, Belgium and France for two weeks to learn about the First and Second World Wars.

He's one of 14 Canadian high school students to winthe VimyFoundation's 2018 Beaverbrook Vimy Prize.

A student atSelwynHouse in Westmount, Li won the spot based onan essay he wrote arguing that the Canadian history curriculum needs to be more multicultural in its scope,in order to engageCanada's diverse student body.

"We need to cater to their heritage, so they care," he told CBC Montreal's Daybreak.

Li's own grandfather was a Chinese soldier who fought the Japanese inthe Second World War.

As he started to research his own past, he came across a reference to the Chinese Labour Corps something he never encountered in history class.

Li said the Chinese Labour Corps was made up of140,000 men of Chinese origin recruited during the First World War by the British and French governments to perform manual labour, freeing more troops for duty on the front lines.

"They were hired to build trenches, man the factories, clean tanksanything the Western allies didn't have enough manpower to do," Li explained."Usually, they weren't given weapons to defend themselves."

He said that's just one example of many groups that contributed to the war effort buthave rarely received a mention in history textbooks.

"The sacrifice of so many different types of people needs to be recognized," he said. "How can we forget 140,000 people who helped win the war?"

Li and the other winners of the Beaverbrook Vimy Prize will spend two weeks, from Aug. 9 to 23, touring First and Second World War battlefields, museums and cemeteries.

"We find that history really comes alive when they are in a cemetery and are seeing rows upon rows of headstones," saidStellaBegic, programs manager with the VimyFoundation.

"The gravity of the first and second world war really hits home when they're in that spot."