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Making sense of dad’s medal

‘Why did France give you a medal?” No matter how often we three kids put that question to our father, he always answered by offhandedly saying something like, “Because I could speak French,” or “I had a nice accent.” Other than rousing renditions of It’s a Long Way to Tipperary or Mademoiselle from Armentières (“Hinky Dinky Parley Voo”) and a couple of brief anecdotes, he never talked about the Great War. He died in 1955, at age 64, having never answered our question. Why had he received the Croix du Guerre? How had he earned one of France’s highest military honours?

In July, I was reading the local paper when an article caught my eye. It was reporting on celebrations to take place in Quebec City and France commemorating the Battle of Amiens on its centennial, Aug. 8. The offensive at Amiens was a surprise assault, and on that day the Canadians and their allies advanced 13 kilometres through the German defences, their most successful day in all combat on the Western Front. Gen. Erich Ludendorff described it as “the black day of the German army.” Until that battle, Allied commanders had expected that the war would last into 1919 or even 1920. Because of the overwhelming success of the Battle of Amiens, the German army was broken and demoralized. It marked the beginning of the Hundred Days Offensive that led to the end of the war in November.

Aug. 8, 1918 was also the day that my father had earned the Croix du Guerre. On the spur of the moment I decided I would travel to Quebec City to attend the commemorative service at the Citadelle. I contacted the organizer at Veterans Affairs, explaining my connection to the great battle. They arranged for VIP seats for one of my children and me to watch the program. I am not sure why I was so determined to go. Perhaps I thought I could find an answer to our question.

My father was born and grew up in Winnipeg in a large family dominated by his maternal grandfather, Andrew Broatch. A locomotive engineer, he had to leave Scotland as a result of his activities attempting to unionize railway workers. Perhaps he’s why my father loved all things Scottish: haggis, Robert Burns’ poetry and “first footing it” on New Year’s Eve. He was less enthusiastic about his strict Presbyterian upbringing. He loved canoeing in the wilderness and being with family at the cottage on Lake Winnipeg.

Royal Winnipeg Rifles unveil legacy project

During the Royal Winnipeg Rifles' 135th anniversary commemoration service at Vimy Ridge Memorial Park on Saturday, the Legacy Stone Project was unveiled. The project is a number of engraved stones placed around the cenotaph to remember the sacrifices of soldiers that served with the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, an army reserve infantry unit based in Winnipeg. 

What’s open and closed on Remembrance Day weekend

On Remembrance Day, Canadians take time to honour the members of the Armed Forces who have served, many of whom made the ultimate sacrifice for Canada.

The Free Press does not publish a print edition on Sunday, Nov. 11, or Monday, Nov. 12, but readers can visit winnipegfreepress.com for the latest news and information.

While no print edition will be published Monday, an electronic edition of the paper will be published. You can find out how to access the electronic edition by watching a video available for viewing at: wfp.to/eedition

Many businesses and government services change their hours over the Remembrance Day weekend. Here's a selection:

A warm Winnipeg embrace before the horror

It could be a photo of any group of students, playing in the snow at what is now Canadian Mennonite University in Tuxedo.

Taken in 1941, it shows 10 young men horsing around, mugging for the camera, not a care in the world.

That would soon change. Within a few years seven of them would be dead, killed while serving their country in the Second World War.

Unlike students at CMU today, they weren’t studying for peaceful careers as teachers, doctors, lawyers, musicians, aid workers, clergy or many other professions.

Awakening after two decades in Italy

It’s autumn 2018 and harvest time in Abruzzo, Italy. Thousands of sweet, mature green and purple grapes release their life’s juices into deep repositories to be transformed into fine local Trebbiano and Montepulciano wine.

It was in the Italian autumn of 1943 that hundreds of young and war-weary Canadian soldiers poured their life’s blood onto the soil of these Abruzzi hills to harvest a hard-won victory at Ortona, the city that today in 2018 commemorates the 75th anniversary of those who died in that battle.

I am fortunate, or maybe not, to be living among the pages of Canada’s history book, here on the Canadian battlegrounds of the Italian Campaign of the Second World War. I was helped along on my journey to a realization of what war is when I read Farley Mowat’s moving account of his experiences here in the Adriatic sector when he was just a a 22-year old platoon commander of the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment.

Anybody who has not read And No Birds Sang is encouraged to read this non-fiction book and to put themselves in his place, duty-bound in his inescapable encounters with horrific events and unforgettable people that transformed him forever.

An honour and privilege

Leading up to Nov. 11, corps and squadrons from across Winnipeg and the surrounding area are involved in various training activities — from drill to military history to Canadian Forces appreciation and familiarization — to prepare them for Remembrance Day ceremonies. In most cases, these classes are led by fellow senior cadets who have taken this training in the past. In some cases, current and former members of the Canadian Armed Forces or local Royal Canadian Legion branches are directly involved in these classes as well. Members of the 1226 Fort Garry Horse Cadet Corps prepare for their roles in Sunday’s Remembrance Day ceremonies earlier this week at the McGregor Armoury.

— Capt. Ian Aastrom, regional cadet support unit training officer

A final salute: Second World War veterans whose lives ended in 2018

Of the more than one million Canadians and Newfoundlanders who fought in the Second World War from 1939 to 1945, only 50,300 were alive in 2017 at an average age of 92, statistics from Veterans Affairs show.

There are only 137 men left in the Manitoba Follow Up Study, which compiled cardiovascular information from 3,983 men who applied to join the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War, and became the largest study ever of the same group of men.

The number was 259 just two years ago.

As the the Greatest Generation inexorably fades away, the Winnipeg Free Press is, for a third-consecutive Remembrance Day, marking passings of Winnipeggers and Manitobans who were veterans of the war.

Remembrance Day from a veteran’s perspective

In Canada, Remembrance Day means different things for different people. For some, it evokes memories of family members in the Canadian Forces. For others, Nov. 11 is a statutory holiday used for sleeping in and relaxing.

Dwight Smith, a Canadian Forces veteran, says he notices that people generally don’t pay much attention to Remembrance Day – but he still does.

“We’ve been at peace for so long, and our army is so small, it doesn’t affect as many people as it used to,” Smith says.

Despite this, he says that when he’s in uniform now, he’s respected more than in the past. Smith says he remembers being in a parade years ago and being yelled at by university students. They called him and his fellow soldiers baby-killers, and they shouted for the soldiers to lay down their guns.

New song a tribute to local valour

A Tec Voc student is paying tribute to three of Winnipeg’s most recognizable soldiers with a song.

Fifteen-year-old Heidi Wright wrote the The Boys of Valour Road after driving past the large mural depicting Cpl. Leo Clarke, Sgt. Maj. Frederick William Hall and Lt. Robert Shankland at the corner of Ellice Avenue and Valour Road.

“I went home and I started researching and finding out who they were and I thought to myself that this would be a good Remembrance Day song to write,” Wright said.

The men lived on the same block of what was then called Pine Street and served in the First World War. All three were awarded the Victoria Cross — the highest medal awarded by the Government of Canada — for acts of bravery during the war.

Ceremony honours Indigenous veterans

Clothes don't necessarily make the man or woman, but they reveal a lot at a military service.

So at Thursday's ceremony for Aboriginal Veterans Day, which is always held three days before Remembrance Day, there were all manner of uniforms as well as haberdashery: wedge hats, berets of all colours, naval caps, and even a headdress, or war bonnet.

Aboriginal Veterans Day is a special occasion to the man donning the war bonnet: Joe Meconse, 77, a veteran of Dene descent from the Churchill area.

"This is one of the most important days on my calendar," said Meconse, 77, who has participated in the ceremonies for the past 16 years. "I remember my friends and all the people who have passed on."

Play nods to First World War centenary

This year’s Remembrance Day will mark the centenary of the end of First World War, the kind of occasion not typically acknowledged on Winnipeg theatre stages.

But, it is observed with the Theatre Projects Manitoba production of Mary’s Wedding, a two-person play about an English immigrant (played by Winnipeg actor Sarah Flynn), a young Alberta farmer (Justin Fry) and their tragic wartime romance.

The drama is the work of Stephen Massicotte, a Canadian playwright from Ontario who attended the University of Calgary “and then I stayed out there.

“It’s kind of strange that I call myself a Calgarian,” he says.

Hundreds gather in Winnipeg to remember fallen soldiers

Not a seat was empty, or a lapel without a poppy, at the Remembrance Day ceremony at the RCB Convention Centre Saturday, as hundreds gathered to honour those who’ve laid their lives on the line in service for Canada.

Men and women in uniform — many with medals pinned to their chests — filled the room. A deep sense of reverence could be felt as the veterans gathered with family, friends, politicians and citizens.

On a projection screen behind the stage footage of the Second World War played, interspersed with interviews of the men and women who were there and lived to talk about it.

Of the veterans in attendance, many gathered amongst themselves, catching up with old friends and swapping stories. While many wore different coloured uniforms, different coloured berets and had different medals pinned to their chests, they all had one thing in common: a poppy on their lapel.

When the gunfire and bomb blasts stop, the nightmare begins for soldiers living with PTSD

Kelly Russell can be anywhere, doing anything, when suddenly the enemy is upon her.Without warning, a sight or smell or sound can take the soon-to-be fully retired Master Warrant Officer back to Afghanistan or to the middle of a terrorist incident.

Russell's enemy is no longer a terrorist or insurgents firing missiles. This enemy hides inside her.

This enemy is post-traumatic stress disorder.

And the post-traumatic stress disorder can rear its terrifying head wherever and whenever it wants, Even in a Winnipeg department store.

Remembrance Day services, openings and closures

Since 1931, Canadians have observed Nov. 11 as Remembrance Day, a time to pay tribute to those brave souls who have — and continue to — sacrifice their lives and safety for our country.

The national holiday was chosen in recognition of the end of the First World War, which came to a close with the signing of the Armistice of Compiegne at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

On Saturday, Remembrance Day ceremonies will be held throughout Winnipeg. In addition to the services at local veteran’s clubs, a couple of major ceremonies will take place:

Winnipeg Remembrance Day Service: RBC Convention Centre, 375 York Ave., 10:15 a.m.Vimy Ridge Park: 821 Preston Ave., 10:30 a.m.The Free Press will not publish a print edition on Saturday, Nov. 11, but readers can visit winnipegfreepress.com for the latest news and information.

Special forces face unique mental challenges

OTTAWA - Retired Sgt. Toby Miller can easily remember the day he was injured by an improvised-explosive device in Afghanistan. It was April 2, 2011 — his 41st birthday, and the beginning of the end of his military career.

Miller returned to duty a short time later, but he knew something wasn't right. When a comrade noticed that he wasn't doing well and suggested he seek help, Miller decided that might be best.

"I went into that meeting and it was abundantly clear to the psychologist that I was probably in no shape to still be doing the job," Miller recalled during a recent phone interview from his home in Comox, B.C.

"I was eventually diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries. There are three dark spots on the left side of my brain that indicate some likely dead spots. And PTSD. I had nightmares for a long time. I still do."

100-year-old veteran shares war memories

MONTREAL - At age 100, Honorary Col. David Lloyd Hart still remembers every detail of the bloody and chaotic scene on the beach during the ill-fated Allied raid on Dieppe in 1942.

Hart, a communications operator, remembers being stuck on a crippled boat about five metres from shore, unable to swim for the beach because he couldn't leave the vessel's radio unit.

"The fire was terrible," he said at an interview at his home in Montreal.

"There was mortar fire, and there were machine-gun nests in the cliffs which weren't seen by our intelligence people because they had them covered, and they had heavy six-pounder or more cannons shooting at us."

Canadian veterans' stories detail selfless sacrifice, struggle

The lives of the men and women who served and are serving in the Canadian Armed Forces are a mystery to many Canadians.

Remembrance Day may be a time when family memories of what a grandparent or great-grandparent did in the First World War or Second World War are vaguely recalled. Winnipeggers over 30 likely remember the flood of 1997, when the army was deployed to protect the city from the raging Red River, but what else have our Armed Forces done? Jody Mitic offers readers an answer.

In his 2015 autobiography Unflinching: The Making of a Canadian Sniper, Mitic told the story of his life in the Canadian Armed Forces: the physical and mental challenges he had to overcome, the years of training he endured, his deployment to Bosnia, becoming a sniper-team leader in Afghanistan, losing his legs to a landmine and overcoming this life-changing injury and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Everyday Heroes is Mitic’s collection of 21 first-person accounts of life in the Canadian Armed Forces. He turns from his story to one “encouraging Canadians to get to know the men and women who wear the Canadian flag on their shoulders… to see beyond the uniform to the person.”

Manitoba artist captured grim realities of aftermath of First World War

An excerpt from the recently published No Man’s Land: The Life and Art of Mary Riter Hamilton (University of Manitoba Press). By Kathryn A. Young and Sarah M. McKinnon.

For western Canadian artist Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), art was her life’s passion.

Her story is one of tragedy and adventure, from homestead beginnings, to genteel drawing rooms in Winnipeg, Victoria, and Vancouver, to Berlin and Parisian art schools, to Vimy and Ypres, and finally to illness and poverty in old age.

No Man’s Land is the first biographical study of Hamilton, whose work can be found in galleries and art museums throughout Canada.

Tim Hortons poppy doughnut causes social media stir

CALGARY - The general manager of the Calgary Poppy Fund and Veterans' Food Bank says he hopes no one gets in big trouble over poppy-emblazoned doughnuts that were sold at a local Tim Hortons.

"It was all good intentions, I understand. Nobody was out to hurt anybody," John Rathwell said Thursday.

The doughnuts, with petals made from red sprinkles surrounding a circle of what appears to be jelly, caused a social media stir after an image of them was posted on the popular Calgary Twitter account @Crackmacs.

"How incredibly insensitive and short-sighted," one Twitter user responded.