The number of living Canadian veterans of the Second World War and the Korean War has fallen sharply since Remembrance Day last year.
Veterans Affairs Canada said the estimated population of living Canadian veterans from those two wars has dropped to approximately 4,306.
Last year, the federal government department estimated their number at 5,649.
Veterans Affairs said it did not have a specific breakdown this year for the separate conflicts, or of the numbers of men and women who served.
In 2025, the department said it believed there were 3,691 surviving Second World War veterans and another 1,909 from the Korean War.
Michael Petrou, a historian at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, said the country is losing its “last living bridge” to the Second World War.
“We’re living in a society that was made or certainly impacted by the Second World War, so to lose that direct personal connection to those events is something very, very sad for us as citizens and especially, speaking from a personal perspective, for us as historians,” he told The Canadian Press.
Petrou recently edited the book “Ripples of War: The Canadian Veteran Experience.” The book, published Nov. 2, is a wide-ranging collection of academic essays and personal reflections from veterans.
The book examines personal experiences of war across a range of conflicts and social groups, including francophones, Indigenous peoples and merchant navy mariners who were long denied veteran status.
The book grew out of an oral history project at the museum called “In their own voices,” which included interviews with Second World War veterans.
“I had that opportunity,” said Petrou. “I feel very lucky for it but I’m also keenly aware that I will likely never have it again, and very soon no one else will.”
He said learning about the veteran experience and how it transcends generations and different conflicts, eras and wars reveals a unique sense of comradeship, purpose and grief that is “uncommon in the civilian world.”
Most veterans from the Second World War are at least in their late 90s now, while those who served in the Korean War are in their early to mid-90s.
The 2021 Census made a rare count of Canadians who served in the military and reported 461,240 Canadian Armed Forces vets living in Canada with an average age of 61.
More than 1.1 million Canadians and Newfoundlanders served during the Second World War. More than 45,000 of them died in the conflict.
Upwards of 26,000 Canadians served during the Korean War, which claimed the lives of 516 Canadian soldiers.
Three veterans of the Second World War were scheduled to attend Wednesday’s national Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa, each of them a centenarian.
Kyle Duggan, The Canadian Press
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 10, 2026.
