I ENJOY PUTTING together every issue of the Review, but none more than those that take me on a journey into the past. I relish the opportunity to delve into the company's history and to hunt through myriad old photographs, looking for shots to accompany articles. And if the truth be told, I spend many more hours at it than I should, for I can't help getting sidetracked. I am fascinated by the old images: pictures of oil explorers in the wilds of Canada in the early part of the last century; of employees and their families at company picnics in the early 1900s, with small girls running races in frilly pale-coloured dresses and black stockings; of Amelia Earhart in flying gear, waiting for her plane to be refuelled; of Foster Hewitt announcing hockey games; of families watching the games on archaic-looking televisions.

I love to "touch" history, to make some sort of personal connection to the past, which enables me to step into it rather than simply view it from a distance. I would often prod my father-in-law to tell me stories about his grandmother, who had been born in 1835. Through her I was able to reach back to the early 1800s – she knew of people who had participated in the war of 1812, read about the progress of the American Civil War in newspapers of the day, and experienced the birth of Canada.

History, of course, is everywhere, and opportunities to touch it abound. Just around the corner from my home in Toronto is Na-Me-Res (short for Native Men's Residence). On it hangs a sign that never fails to send me on a journey into the past. "Celebrating 20,000 years of being in the neighbourhood," read the large hand-painted letters. Always when I pass the sign I find myself picturing what the "neighbourhood" might have looked like 10,000 or 20,000 years ago and what life might have been like for its residents.

Earlier this year my daughter, Morag, went on a school trip to Italy. She delighted in the opportunity to see firsthand so many great works of art and architecture and to walk in the footsteps of Roman emperors, senators and citizens. But, she tells me, it was a small terra cotta house in the Castello area of Venice that aroused her most fervent imaginative wanderings. The centuries-old house had been the home of John Cabot, or rather Giovanni Caboto, the great navigator who found his way to Newfoundland in 1497. He is a prominent figure in elementary-school Canadian history, but the focus is on his seafaring exploits. Seeing his home, being able to put context around the facts, brought Cabot alive for Morag and set her musing about the man who came upon Newfoundland on a journey he hoped would take him to China: What was his childhood like? What led him to become an adventurer? What did he think when he found "Newfoundland" blocking his way to China?

Historical novels are wonderful conduits to the past. I've always enjoyed looking out at Lake Nipissing from a finger of the Canadian Shield that stretches into the water by our cottage. At first it was the simple beauty of the lake that drew me. But then I read Brian Moore's Black Robe, which follows a Jesuit priest and his protege on a soul-searching journey from Quebec to a mission on Lake Huron. The journey would likely have taken them across Lake Nipissing. Now when I look out at the lake in quiet moments, I often find myself thinking about the people who travelled it in centuries past – Hurons and Algonquins, Jesuits and voyageurs, Samuel de Champlain and his companion, Étienne Brûlé.

Two years ago my family and I drove down to Gettysburg and various other Civil War sites in the United States. As we made our way there, I read aloud Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels, a novel based on the battle of Gettysburg. Standing on the now gentle hills where the great battle took place, and later looking up at the room in a building on the town square where Lincoln polished the Gettysburg Address, was so much more stirring having read the book.

I love the stories history gives us, but value it for so much more. History is our foundation; it helps define who we are. It provides valuable lessons and as such is a compass for the future. And it is a rich storehouse of knowledge accumulated through millennia. Because this knowledge exists, we are able to stand, as they say, on the shoulders of those who went before us.

In recent months, I have also spent time looking through the company's photographs to prepare a poster marking Imperial's 125th anniversary. It includes 125 photographs, one for each year of the company's life. Some represent major achievements, others the day-to-day life of the corporation. Together they tell a story of challenge and adventure, tenacity and achievement, ingenuity and foresight. It is a story that encompasses the coming of the automobile and the airplane, the opening of the North, the building of roads, secret wartime missions, the discovery of oil in the West and Canada's birth as a major oil producer, and so much more. As I look through these photographs, the story comes alive, at least in my imagination, and I touch history. – Sarah Lawley