The purpose of the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies is to foster research, teaching, and public discussion of historical and contemporary military and strategic issues. The Centre was founded in 1991 with support from the Military and Strategic Studies programme (now the Security and Defence Forum) of Canada's Department of National Defence. The research activities of the Centre are multi-disciplinary, with concentrations on military history and the strategic analysis of defence operations and peacekeeping.
LCMSDS has an extensive publications program, specializing in books and reports on various aspects of Canada's military history and on contemporary strategic questions. The Centre publishes Canadian Military History, a quarterly journal-in-a-magazine format. The consistently high quality of CMH, in both content and production, has enabled it to grow rapidly in size and circulation.
Among the Centre's greatest resources is the Canadian World War II Air Photo Collection, consisting of approximately 300,000 air photos taken by RCAF units in Europe during 1942-44. LCMSDS also houses the "No Price Too High" Archive, The Ronnie Shepherd Military Operational Research Archive, the Robert Vogel Library, and more than a dozen other archival collections. The Centre makes these collections and archives available to researchers, students, and other interested parties both online and in our library.
The Centre also supports classroom teaching and educational programs at Wilfrid Laurier University in History (military history), Political Science (international relations), and Mathematics (game theory). The Centre also provides specialized equipment and resources for the use of students and instructors.
The Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies has an extensive program of conferences, workshops, invited speakers and seminars covering the military history of Canada as well as national and international issues related to military operations and strategy. LCMSDS publishes books and reports on these issues on an occasional basis.
