Ted Barris

Not a large man, he stood about as tall as the art easel he was about to unveil. But by the motion of his hands as he spoke and the animation in his face, we knew we had to listen. He wore a bright red and white shirt (I think I’ve always seen him in the colours of Canada). His commentary spoke of pride. His eyes sparkled telling a veteran’s story.

Then, he pulled away the easel’s covering to reveal his latest portrait honouring Second World War veteran and friend Harry Watts. There was instant applause from the audience, there to honour Harry’s 90th birthday in 2013. Then, portrait artist Dave Sopha and veteran Harry Watts hugged a genuine hug of appreciation and respect.

“Veterans like Harry Watts are larger than life,” Dave said. “We owe them everything.”

At that unveiling, artist Sopha told us of Harry’s extraordinary service as a dispatch rider in the liberation of Italy, then the liberation of the Netherlands between 1943 and 1945. Clearly, the artist admired the veteran for stepping up when Canada needed him most, and for enduring wartime adversity. But what Dave Sopha didn’t talk about on that occasion was the adversity in his own life – an automobile crash in 1970 that broke his back – that changed both his focus and his art. He moved to professional airbrush art. Then, in late 2008, he experienced another unexpected shift.

When news outlets in Canada published stories about three Canadian soldiers killed in the war in Afghanistan, artist Sopha responded. On Dec. 8, 2008, the detonation of an improvised explosive device took the lives of Canadians Cpl. Mark McLaren, W.O. Robert Wilson and Pte. Demetrios Diplaros. They were Canada’s 98th, 99th and 100th deaths in Afghanistan.

Sopha immediately expressed a need to capture the faces and to honour the sacrifices of all 100 Canadians killed in the war with oil-paint portraits. He gathered images of the fallen soldiers from Veterans Affairs, newspapers and their families and began a painstaking labour of love, painting portraits of them all. Nearly day and night – 16 hours a day, seven days a week – Sopha created a canvas mural 40 feet long and 10 feet tall.

“Portraits of Honour seemed the right title,” he told me at a veterans banquet in Oshawa in 2011. But the mural took longer than Dave anticipated because by the time he’d completed the 100 portraits, Canada had lost another 58 servicemen and women. He added them to the mural too. Then, he painted an honour roll of their names in granite at each end of the mural.

“After 10,000 hours of work,” his website said, “Dave still paints every day, adding poppy petals to the mural for all the Canadians who’ve fallen since the First World War.”

But according to one of Dave Sopha’s close Kinsmen Club buddies, Ron Orr, the work of creating portraits of the fallen didn’t stop with the end of the Afghanistan mission. When the three RCMP officers were killed in Moncton, N.B., in 2014, artist Sopha widened his memorials in paint to honour first responders, such as police, firefighters and paramedics. And when Fire Chief Clayton Cassidy died near Cache Creek, during a flash flood in B.C., Dave honoured his memory with a portrait too.

“Dave seemed to feel none of these extraordinary people should be lost or forgotten,” Orr said. “Just like the mural, it became Dave’s personal crusade.”

But Dave Sopha’s portraits aren’t as numerous these days, the brush strokes not as vigorous, Ron Orr told me. His sidekick for so many trips to deliver his portraits to families in mourning has slowed down in recent months. He’s coping with another adversity – pancreatic cancer.

Dave’s daughter Terri Sopha has offered family and friends updates on her dad’s radiation and chemotherapy treatments. Her latest Facebook update explained that Dave, at 73, is pretty much bedridden now and hasn’t the energy to paint or converse much.

“He’s slowly losing his battle with cancer,” she said.

The dynamic mural that Dave Sopha created to acknowledge the sacrifice of 158 Canadian soldiers, sailors and aircrew during the war in Afghanistan resides in its own place of honour today. It adorns a wall at the Preston Kinsmen Club, where Dave and Ron have been members for 30 years. And while I’m sure Kinsmen members think the world of Dave Sopha’s work, there are those who feel Portraits of Honour deserves a more national profile – given its scope and content.

While he’s never campaigned for such recognition, Dave Sopha’s portraiture tribute – like the works of Arthur Lismer in the Great War, Alex Colville in the Second World War, and Ted Zuber in the Korean War – deserves official standing in the national capital and Dave Sopha his own place among war artists.