• Awarded on: April 20, 1999

Peter Nikola Stanojevic, Chatham, Ont.
Governor General's Caring Canadian Award

Peter Stanojevic, a teacher at Chatham Kent Secondary School, discovered that many former students had served in the Armed Forces during World War II, and that forty-four of them had never returned. He researched the lives and families of these 44 students, and staged a Remembrance Day program at the school to inform today's students of the sacrifices made by so many former students in the cause of peace. Since then, the Remembrance Day services at the school have become a high-profile event, attended by members of the Royal Canadian Legion, the Air Force and Naval associations and local residents. Mr. Stanojevic has also erected a memorial to the fallen students and published their stories in a book entitled They Never Came Back.