Canada has in excess of 7,500 war memorials, only a few more
than two hundred of them feature the life-sized figure of a soldier in stone or
metal. Some of the best of these – by the most accomplished artist-sculptors
working in Canada in the 1920s – are to be found in the Maritime Provinces: the
Emanuel Hahn grieving soldier at Westville NS, Hahn’s Tommy in Greatcoat at Moncton NB, George Hill’s bold trio of
Canadian infantrymen in front of the Island Legislature at Charlottetown.
I might have hoped to sell out the remaining stock of Remembered thus compelling my publisher
into undertaking a second printing. Just as well that I had trimmed my
ambitions to simply this: motivating attendees to pay closer attention to their
monuments and raise awareness of the enduring shadows Vimy, the Somme and Passchendaele left in the region’s communities.
Selling a few books turned out to be one of the lesser rewards
of the tour. A better one was to have people tell me after a talk that they
would look at cenotaphs in a different way and with raised appreciation. Better
still were the stories I heard about grandfathers and great-uncles who went off
to war in 1915 or 1916 and never came home again, leaving a legacy of grief and
regret in families that endures to the present. Or stories about those who did come home again, altered forever by
what they had experienced in the battlefields of Belgium and France.
Most of my audiences amounted to fewer than twenty. Some who
attended were old friends I had not seen in years. For the most part we were
billeted with friends and family – Stephen and Sheila in Halifax, Garth and
Carole in Fredericton – but we turned the tour into an opportunity to visit
others – George and Joan at Port Greville, Carole and Herb and Nackawic, Verna
at Havelock – that delivered just the sort of personal connection that an old
dog such as myself has come to cherish.
The most momentous of the six talks was the one that didn’t
occur in a library at all. Pal Garth arranged to have me speak to a session of the
every-Wednesday-morning Fredericton Golden Club, mostly older guys who like to
get together for what Bob Nagel liked to call “good Christian fellowship” and
to hear a guest speaker talk about matters likely to interest to men – there
are no women in the Golden Club – above a certain age. Eighty-six attended.
Garth promised I would like the folks I met at the Golden
Club. I did. Folks like Lyle, a life-long Maple Leafs fan who held no grudge
when I admitted to preferring Les
Canadiens. The affair opened with a rousing rendition of Oh Canada then the Master-of-Song led
the boys through more song: When You’re
Smiling, Molly Malone. Far as I
could tell, no one held back. I certainly didn’t. We rattled the windows.
After reports from the Ways and Means, Bowling and Finance
committees it was my turn. I had been warned that long-winded people get short
shrift: go too long and you will get the hook. I spoke for 28 minutes. No one
left. A number of the lads came up to say good things about the talk and to
tell me more stories about fathers and grandfathers. I even sold books, five of
them.
Writing Remembered
was highly rewarding for me. Speaking about war memorials and those they are
meant to remember is rewarding too. When Stephen King launches a new book I
suppose he gets to entertain audiences somewhat bigger than mine at the Baddeck
or Fredericton libraries. I hear the print run of Hillary Clinton’s new book What Happened is 300,000, oh, about a
hundred times that of Remembered. That’s
alright: I hope they have as much fun in their book tours as I’ve just had in mine.
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