Canada’s First World War vets take different approaches to Remembrance Day

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/11/2006 (7190 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO (CP) – Dwight Wilson planned to lay a wreath and possibly sing a tune while Lloyd Clemett watches at a Remembrance Day service at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre on Saturday.

On the other side of the continent, John Babcock will likely lament the chill fall air that keeps him from playing golf with his wife Dorothy.

Wilson, Clemett and Babcock share the distinction of being the three known remaining Canadian veterans of the First World War – a conflict that ended almost 90 years ago.

Clemett and Babcock have reached the age of 106 and Wilson 105.

“I love to sing and I’ll sing anywhere,” Wilson told journalists who visited him last week at the veterans’ residence of Sunnybrook.

More intent on flexing his surprisingly strong baritone voice than reminiscing about the war, Wilson charmed reporters with a rendition of the Rogers and Hammerstein classic “If I Loved You.”

Wilson’s dogged determination to join his countrymen in the trenches of France drove him to enlist not once, but twice, despite news reports chronicling the horrendous conflict being waged in Europe.

During the First World War, 68,260 Canadians were killed on the battlefields of Europe. Another 173,000 of about 620,000 who served were injured.

The war would ultimately claim 15 million civilian and military lives on both sides of the conflict.

While the exact number of remaining First World War veterans is not known, both France and Britain have six and Australia has three.

With just three Canadians left, the Dominion Institute has begun a campaign to give Canada’s last First World War veteran a state funeral, an honour usually reserved for governors general and prime ministers.

Retired major-general Lewis MacKenzie said the passing of the last three veterans from the Great War will represent a “significant” moment in Canadian history.

“They keep telling us we became a nation at Vimy Ridge, and this is the last of a generation that achieved all those wonderful war records,” said MacKenzie of the First World War battle that some historians pinpoint as the birthplace of a Canadian identity.

“I would certainly hope that the public would take notice of it.”

In’16, Wilson’s youthful age of 15 saw him diverted from the frontlines and relegated to digging defensive trenches in the south of England.

Clemett, who lives in the same unit at Sunnybrook as Wilson, had a similar experience.

The youngest of a band of brothers to heed the call to battle, Clemett lied when he told the army he was’ – the official enlistment age – and signed his papers in January’16.

The enthusiastic teen had three older siblings who enlisted. Fate helped ensure his safe return to Toronto when peace was declared on Nov. 11,’18.

“The day that the Armistice was signed was the day his battalion was supposed to go to the front,” his son David said in a telephone interview.

Clemett was scheduled to meet with reporters the same day as Wilson, but hospital staff said he was still tired from their annual Halloween party.

Babcock, who has lived in the United States since the’20s, was bitterly disappointed as a young man that despite his best efforts to join his countrymen on the frontlines, he was relegated to the role of “tin soldier.”

“I volunteered (for the frontlines), but they knew I was underage so they wouldn’t take me,” Babcock said from his home in Spokane, Wa., earlier this year.

Still, some eight decades of hindsight helped temper that young man’s regret over not having faced enemy fire in the trenches of France.

“I might have got killed. I know a lot of my friends got killed.”

In September, Babcock managed to play a round of golf. While he lacked the balance to putt, he was still able to drive, said his wife Dorothy – whom he married in the’70s following the death of his first wife.

Asked what lessons this generation of Canadians – currently embroiled in an increasingly dangerous mission in Afghanistan – should take from the First World War, Babcock succinctly replied: “There’s a lot bad people in the world today. Of course, there’s a lot of good people in the world too.”