In Remembrance Of The Fallen Of Warfare

"At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them." ~ Laurence Binyon

"If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields." ~ John McCrae

It is Remembrance Day here in Canada, while elsewhere the date is known as Armistice Day or Veterans Day. At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the guns of war fell silent across the battlefields of Europe, ending the Great War. There will be services in cities, towns, and villages, the laying of wreaths, and the rituals common to the occasion. I will be attending the national service today. And for today, I feature photographs from the last year in my photoblog. The above is taken at Green Island in Ottawa. The park is home to several military monuments, including the National Artillery Memorial. Right beside it is a statue of the Canadian soldier, doctor, and poet John McCrae, who gave the world the poem In Flanders Fields.

Another military monument in the city is the National Aboriginal Veterans Monument, which features four Indigenous warriors back to back, with the wolf, bear, elk, and bison around them, and an eagle overhead. It honours Indigenous soldiers and veterans who have fought for the country, even at times when the country wasn't treating them right. It stands in Confederation Park, where several military monuments reside.

Just up the street, occupying the very heart of Confederation Square, is the National War Memorial, seen here during the Tulip Festival. It was first dedicated to the dead of the First World War in 1939, and has since been rededicated, including the Second World War, Korean War, South African War, Afghan War, and those who have served and died in military service to the country. It is here today that the national service of remembrance is to be held.

The Canadian War Museum is at Lebreton Flats, just west of the downtown core, telling the story of Canadian military history, at home and abroad. It looks like a bunker, or a massive bomber plane, which is entirely appropriate for its subject material.

Lebreton Gallery inside holds a wealth of military equipment from multiple countries and eras, here photographed from above.

As one emerges from the permanent collection, the last artifact is this. Canadian forces ended the First World War at the Belgian town of Mons, where they presented two field guns to the people of the town, saying that these were the last guns fired on the enemy before the Armistice. For the centennial of the ending of the war, Mons presented this one back to the people of Canada, and now it has a place of pride here.

The War Memorial features the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at its base. An unknown Canadian soldier who fell at the Battle of Vimy Ridge is now buried there. His original gravestone occupies the Memorial Chamber inside the Museum. The building is designed and angled so that at 11 in the morning on November 11th, provided the sun is shining, sunlight will shine through an overhead window and illuminate the stone.

A Wound In The Heart

Today I make use of this blog for photography, and a more somber tone than is usually the case here. Flags at half mast: a sign of mourning and commemoration. This was taken yesterday outside one of the federal office buildings downtown in Ottawa.

 Several days ago it came out in the media. 215 bodies found: children. Buried at the site of a former residential school at Kamloops, B.C.. The residential school system is a dark stain on Canadian history: the taking of generations of indigenous children by the government and put into schools run by the churches. It is a legacy we are still dealing with today, as the last of those schools closed in living memory. Indigenous people and communities still deal with the fallout of trauma, abuse, and neglect. All in a program meant to "get the Indian out of them."

215 innocent children. Taken from families, from what they knew and loved, never to return. It is heartbreaking and infuriating and... the worst part is  that you just know there are more bodies out there. Buried in ummarked graves far from their homes and families. Victims  of a system that strove to stamp out who they are.

Other bloggers have already addressed this. I wasn't sure if I could. I know I don't have the eloquence for it. To call it a tragedy isn't sufficient. Nor are apologies sufficient. Speaking for myself, I  feel ashamed of my country.

So what's to be done? First, those children need to be returned to their homelands to rest among their people. Then every other residential school must be examined. Because there are more graves out there. And those children must be sent home. After that? There were people who knew. And didn't care. People still alive. They must be held to account. This is a terrible wrong that must be made right.

Flags have been at half last for days: one hour for each of these 215. And on Parliament Hill, around and beyond the Centennial Flame, is a growing commemoration. Messages, photos, indigenous items... and toys.... and children's  shoes. I leave the images to say the rest.

If Ye Break Faith With Us

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada, Armistice Day or Veterans Day elsewhere. Marking the end of the First World War, the date has come to commemorate the fallen of war in general. This year is a strange one, with Covid-19 restricting so much else, including commemoration.

John McCrae was a Canadian officer, soldier, poet, and doctor who went to the fields of Europe, fought, suffered, and saw death in the First World War. Out of his experiences came arguably the definitive poem of that War, one that still holds its power today.

Canadian artist Ruth Abernethy is known for her sculptures, including a matching pair of sculptures of John McCrae. One is in his home town of Guelph, Ontario. The other is in Ottawa, seen here in pictures from my photoblog taken in 2016. It is set on Green Island, where the Rideau River meets the Ottawa River, and in a park setting where there are other military monuments. Abernethy renders her subject larger than life but approachable, capturing the expression and humanity of the person. Here McCrae is sitting, a copy of his poem in his hand, with poppies at the base of the sculpture.

A Walk Among The Tombstones

For once I'm going to be serious. Oh, shush, no laughing. I can be serious. When I want to be. On occasion. Just not when introducing what's supposed to be a straight forward post.

On Good Friday, I decided to spend the day here in Ottawa visiting of all things, two cemeteries, both large ones. The purpose was some material for my photoblog, which will be forthcoming in early May. I went to Notre Dame Cemetery, and then to Beechwood Cemetery, which is the source of these shots today.

Beechwood is a national cemetery, with the graves of prominent Canadians, including a prime minister, a governor general, political figures, writers, engineers, athletes, business people, artists, scientists, and every day citizens. It also has grounds set aside as an RCMP national cemetery, and for the National Military Cemetery.

There's some sort of thought that goes around that graveyards are creepy places, but I find them quite peaceful. Both Notre Dame and Beechwood were. This is the larger of the two, at 160 acres (Notre Dame consists of 20 hectares). Both date from the 1870s, and are still seeing new burials and interments. Both have mausoleums.

Beechwood's main building also features a large inter faith chapel that surprised me- no one symbol here of any faith, and yet it felt appropriate if a funeral needs to be held in here. The staff were also helpful; they provided maps to the grounds, particularly in terms of where prominent grave sites can be found. At most of those, a plaque can be found nearby giving details on the individual.

I wandered along the paths for quite awhile, photographing as I went along, gathering material for posts (there'll be several days of cemetery posts when the time comes). 

Along the way I paid visits to the two sections of the National Military Cemetery. Here are buried veterans of world wars and military service, even long after their days in the military were done. The tombstones, done according to the standards of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, stand sentinel over those interred here. This is the older of the two sections, filled with veterans. I can tell you that walking among them, looking at names, at the simplicity of the stones, was very moving. I will be featuring a full series on this over at the photoblog in May, so have a look when the time comes. I hope you've enjoyed this brief glance at Beechwood.

One Morning In The Somme

Before we get things started today, go on over to Norma's blog for her movie review for Thor: The Dark World. It's a good one. Now then, tomorrow is Remembrance Day in Canada. While it goes by different names elsewhere in the world, November 11th, the last day of the First World War, is commemorated to honour the war dead and the veterans of wars in many places across the globe. Aside from this post, keep an eye out at Sacred Ground where I wrote a guest blog for Lyn on the soldier and poet John McCrae. And have a peek at Kittie's blog, where she is paying tribute to the U.S. Marines. I'll be attending the national ceremonies here at the War Memorial tomorrow, as well as taking in things at the War Museum in the afternoon. There will be pictures to come, and you can find Remembrance Day posts starting tomorrow at my photoblog. Today, I'm going back in time nearly a century, to a dark day in the fields of France...

Each Canada Day, before the crowds start to build in downtown Ottawa, a solemn ceremony takes place at the War Memorial. A wreath is laid in memory of a terrible July 1st from the First World War. It is in memory of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, which served under British command in the Great War, and would pay the ultimate price on a bloody July morning during the Battle of the Somme.

Until 1949, when Newfoundland joined Confederation, the province was under British jurisdiction, and Newfoundland soldiers served overseas in that conflict. A regiment sized force was sent to Europe, serving in the Gallipoli campaign under the Newfoundland Regiment name. By March of 1916, it was transferred to the Western Front, where by a trick of fate, it ended up in line at a place called Beaumont-Hamel.

What would end up being called the Battle Of The Somme is often characteristic of the futility of the First World War: an entire generation of young men, killed, wounded, or forever marked by the horrors of war, sent by officers employing tactics from the days of Napoleon.... against machine guns, accurate artillery, and poison gas. It was only towards the end, during the Hundred Days, when someone figured out how to coordinate attacks with combined arms fighting, that the stalemate would finally break. The Battle Of The Somme, which would kill or wound over a million men, saw its first day on the first of July.

Nearly eight hundred soldiers and officers of the Newfoundland Regiment set out that morning from positions following the explosion of a mine shaft beneath German lines. The explosion alerted the Germans to the impending attack, and there was confusion and miscommunication from the British command about what was happening with British units on the field. The men moved out onto the field of battle from their trenches, into the line of fire... and into history. Within a half hour, of the seven hundred eighty men who moved out from the trenches, only one hundred ten emerged unhurt, with little more than half of that number still fit for duty the following day. A casualty rate of eighty percent, it pretty much finished off the regiment, and actually ended up being the second highest fatality rate of an attacking force during the battle.

It is a wound that remains among Newfoundlanders even today, a profound shock to the system. Canada Day is also Memorial Day for Newfoundlanders, the reminder of one terrible day for so many of their own far across the sea. The shattered regiment's remnants was given the prefix Royal by King George V- a very rare distinction- and the battlefield was purchased by Newfoundland following the war, the largest portion of the Battle of the Somme to be set aside. The Commonwealth Cemetery at Beaumont-Hamel contains the remains of those who fell, in neat rows with white gravestones. It's a peaceful place, surrounded by preserved trenches and rolling ground... and yet the possible presence of unexploded ordnance still in places decades later. There are memorials there to the 29th British Division, as well as the 51st Highland Division, both of which suffered appalling losses during the battle, and the place is dominated by the Newfoundland Memorial, a bronze statue of a caribou that stands sentinel over the fields. 

On November 11th, we gather at cenotaphs to remember and honour the war dead and the surviving veterans, not only of the Great War, but those before and since. The veterans of the Great War are all dead now; those with direct memories of that time are fewer by the day. The veterans of the Second World War that finally resolved so many issues are a dwindling number in countries across the world. It is to us to remember their stories.

It is places like this, where men who fought for King and country far from home, that resonate in Canadian history, even before Newfoundland was part of our country. Beaumont-Hamel is one of the places I must see with my own eyes someday, to walk the paths, see the graves, to truly understand that terrible morning nearly a century ago.

The Forging Of Two Nations

Some business to see to before I get things started today. We've extended our deadline at the Authors For Oklahoma initiative. Check out our latest update here. All proceeds for the book raffle go to the Red Cross, and help is still needed in Moore, Oklahoma, after the tornado this summer. Head on over to the update for more details, because it's a good cause.

My cover designer Collin Beishir has started up a blog, which you can find here at Wordpress. Check him out and start following him!

Norma's been off for a few days, but yesterday she wrote a new blog about her two birds named Sam at her Wordpress blog. Head on over there, check it out, and comment!

Finally, for those of you who enjoy my Day In The Life blogs, Norma and I worked on a variation over in the joint blog, and with the antics of a certain sleazy mayoral candidate in the news as of late, it's an appropriate and hilarious topic. Go on over and check out A Day In The Life Of A Sex Scandalized Politician. And leave us a comment!

As for today, I've got myself a book review to see to. So without further ado, shall we begin?

The American Civil War tore apart a country. Secession in the South sought to establish a new nation where life could be lived in the fashion people were used to- with the foundation of slavery underpinning everything. Union Northerners refused to allow the country to fall apart, and for more than four years, Americans went to war against each other, killing each other in large numbers over the issues of race, freedom, the nation, and what kind of future they would all have. By war’s end, the country was reunited, slavery was abolished, and state’s rights, one of the underlying issues that had contributed to the war, gave way to a more unified sense of Americans about themselves. Yet two countries did rise out of the aftermath of that war.

Blood And Daring: How Canada Fought The American Civil War And Forged A Nation is a new book by historian John Boyko, weaving the tale of the Civil War and that of the birth of Canada. The war influenced Canada- and Canada influenced the war- in ways that most people overlook, and this book sheds light on a side of the war that needs to be told. I have read earlier books that go through some of this material; Claire Hoy wrote an insightful book several years ago called Canadians In The Civil War. This book delves into the same territory but offers new insights.

The author tells the story of the war and the parallels of what was going on across the border before, during, and after those years. The British North American possessions- Canada East and West, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland- had been given chances to form a more cohesive union going back a decade or more before the war; officials in Britain were distracted by events in Europe and wondered if it was worthwhile to hold onto their Canadian possessions. American leaders looked north as well as west, believing in the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, that all of North America should be theirs. Abolitionists brought slaves north into Canada, to safety and freedom, away from the slave hunters, to the far end of the Underground Railroad. Southern aristocratic families vacationed in Canada in the summers, escaping the heat from their home states, forming friendships in towns along the way. And colonial leaders were divided among themselves.

Boyko uses six people from the era as cornerstones to tell his story. John Anderson, a fugitive slave who settled in Canada after his flight to freedom found himself at the core of a court case, pursued by American officials for killing a white man during his escape. The case made headlines around the world; had Canadian courts ruled for deportation, it would bring an end to the safety of the Underground Railroad, potentially allowing any white slave holder to demand the return of a free man from Canadian soil. Through Anderson and people like him, who saw Canada as a place free of bounty hunters, this part of the story, so integral to the war that followed, is told. Boyko stresses the anger felt by many in the South towards Canada for harbouring what they viewed as personal property, and the influence that had in increasing the tensions between North and South.

William Seward

William Seward, the fiery Secretary of State under Lincoln, is a presence through the book. His intention early on to try to provoke a war with Britain, in the expectation that the South would rally around the flag, is explored. Like other politicians in the North, Seward was a fervent believer in Manifest Destiny, seeking ways either through bluffing, intimidation, or negotiation, to take Canada and make it American. This was a belief he held before and after the war, and I can only imagine the personal frustration he must have felt to end up getting so outmanoeuvred, in the end, by a man on the other side of the border.

Sarah Edmonds

Sarah Emma Edmonds is a lesser known figure, and yet it makes her all the more compelling in the narrative. Here we have a young Canadian woman who, through circumstances, began to pass herself off as a man, making a living on both sides of the border. When the Civil War began, she joined the Union Army, serving variously as a nurse, soldier, and spy, seeing action while passing herself off as male. She survived the war, serving both as her male alter ego and as herself later on, one of a number of women doing the same who saw frontline combat. Her story is woven in with that of other soldiers. It’s estimated that anywhere from twenty to fifty thousand Canadians served in the War, the vast majority of them in the Union Army; Boyko settles on a total of forty thousand. This was despite the fact that the British were officially neutral. Some served out of principle, while others were co-opted in by unscrupulous recruiting brokers who got them drunk and ended up putting them in a uniform. Canadian boys served all over; Boyko makes note of their presence in the 20^th Maine on Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg. Twenty nine Canadians would win the Congressional Medal of Honour. A Canadian was among the honour guard outside the McLean home when Grant and Lee came to terms at Appomattox. And a Canadian, Lieutenant Edward Doherty, who had moved south in 1860, was the cavalry officer in charge of the troops who ran John Wilkes Booth to ground. Boyko vividly brings the story of the soldier to life in his narrative, exploring how young Canadian men violated the terms of neutrality and served through the Civil War.

Jacob Thompson

During the war, Canada served as a breeding ground of Confederate plots, and into this, Boyko brings us Jacob Thompson. Once a Secretary of the Interior for the US government, he became Jefferson Davis’ point man in establishing a second front, operating from Toronto and Montreal, dispatching spies and irregular operations across the border. Coupled with the fact that arms were shipped to the Confederacy from Canadian sources (including a foundry not far from my childhood home) and that Confederate ships found safe harbour in some Canadian ports, there was some sympathy for Confederates- even while other Canadians were fervent abolitionists. Thompson stepped into all of this, operating a shadowy network of spies and saboteurs, conceiving with his cohorts a series of plots directed at destabilizing the Union, conferring with Copperhead politicians who felt that the war served little purpose. Thompson’s operations were a thorn in the side for the Union at a time when Lincoln was occupied with the war, increasing tensions on both sides of the border. It gave fuel to the annexation agenda, to the idea that Canada was the source of trouble for the Union, particularly given the two faced response from colonial officials and the British.

George Brown

Boyko’s last two keystone figures are tied together, as fathers of Confederation and political rivals who had to work together to forge a country through these years. George Brown looms large in Canadian history. A politician and reporter who founded the Globe (still around today as the Globe and Mail), Brown had already served in a number of capacities in the colonial administration before the War. As a politician and as a journalist, he argued the case that to prevent themselves from being swallowed up by America, Canadians would have to forge an identity, a country, for themselves. And looking at what was happening south of the border, he saw the need for a strong central government clearly from the fact that state’s rights had been such a strong factor in triggering the war.

John A. Macdonald

John A. Macdonald looms over the entire book. From the 1850s on, Macdonald was the strongest voice in colonial politics, in a variety of posts. He was something of a rascal (and a drunkard), but also a fiercely principled man and a masterful politician. As the war came, Macdonald understood that the only way to stand up against a strong Union during and afterwards would be as a united front. Like Lincoln, he concealed his wisdom behind a front of sorts- for Lincoln it was the homespun storytelling, for Macdonald, it was the drinking, which served its own purpose. He was the driving force behind Confederation, negotiating the terms of what would become a country in its own right. And he was a leader who could keep a calm head in a crisis- through the tensions of those four years and the Fenian Raids that followed, the efforts of Irish-American veterans to invade and use Canada to force Britain to let go of Ireland. We see the resourceful and ingenious Macdonald who completely checkmated Seward by purchasing and securing the whole of what is today the Canadian west and north for a pittance, bringing an end to the dream of annexation. And we see the Macdonald who- during the Treaty of Washington negotiations that would wrap up fallout of the war for America, Britain, and Canada- would stand his ground on everything, securing the future of his country.

Boyko ends up giving us an insightful book that explores in depth the complex story of the Civil War on both sides of the border. Canada rose up from that conflict, played a part in many ways. It was a time of deep tension between neighbours, when backstabbing and mutual suspicion seemed to be the order of the day. The Civil War made Confederation a necessity, driving colonial leaders with vastly different concerns to accept that survival meant joining together, and played a big part in shaping the national character. Its aftermath became the foundation for where the country would go, and the way it would relate to America in the years that followed. Blood and Daring is a well written book that offers a fresh look at both countries, and a worthy addition to the story of the Civil War. Readers from both sides of the border will come away enlightened.