Posts with the Great War tag

Barris Beat

Don’t know what we’ve got, ’til it’s gone

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Uxbridge Post Office, a symbol of what community can lose without a fight.

I’d overlooked it for years. I think it was back 2006 when a number of us organized a weekend to celebrate the township’s anniversary. We were artists, shop owners, civic workers and town boosters volunteering our time. Leading up to the event, we’d looked for a place to meet. That’s when financial specialist Brian Evans offered us a room at his Toronto Street office. I stepped into his board room for that first meeting and noticed a collage of photographs of a turn-of-the-century building framed on the wall. I’d never seen that Edwardian-era building before.

“What and where was that?” I asked.

“Don’t you know?” someone responded. “That was our original post office.” And when I asked where, they all said right where the new post office is today. “They knocked down the old one and threw up that new one.” (more…)

Barris Beat

A tour to Remember

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Caitlin Wager and her father Rob shared a moment on Dieppe Beach during their recent Remembrance Tour.

A few days ago, Grade 11 student Caitlin Wager and several of her Uxbridge Secondary School classmates stopped on a bridge in the Netherlands. The overpass was situated amid newly blooming tulips at a popular springtime tourist spot, called Keukenhof. Not surprisingly, the teenagers decided to take some selfies. Suddenly, a Dutch woman approached the Uxbridge girls, and Caitlin thought the woman was going to ask her take a photo for her.

“No,” the Dutch woman said. “I want to take a picture of you.”

“Pardon?” Caitlin asked, not quite understanding.

“All of you,” the woman repeated. “I want a picture of all of you.”

And when the girls asked why, she said, “Because you’re Canadians.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Give ’em some wind

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Though he rarely does, Ryan Robertson spoke at a cemetery memorial in France last Sunday.

The countryside outside Courcelette, in France, is not particularly remarkable. The land rolls innocuously through farmyards, bluffs of trees and tiny rural villages where, this time of year, people are tilling the soil for planting.

Amid the oats, barley and rape seed that farmers are cultivating in this part of France, a family arrived from Canada, this past week. Near Courcelette, that family – equally unassumingly – came to a small cemetery last Sunday afternoon. One of its youngest members, Ryan Robertson, stood in the cemetery and did something unusual. He spoke in front of his family and some of his Uxbridge classmates about a cousin who died here in France 103 years ago.

“Oliver Barton arrived in the country in the summer of 1916,” said Ryan, reading from notes he’d prepared specially for the occasion. “Assigned to the 13th Battalion, on Oct. 8 (1916), Private Barton left his trench. But his battalion was practically wiped out by German machine-gun fire.” (more…)

Barris Beat

NORAD Trophy ceremony

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Author with L/Col. Dean Black and the 2018 NORAD Trophy at Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum. Photo Matthew Wocks.

Just as I finished a presentation, last week, my cellphone rang. The readout said, “Air Force.” It’s silly, but almost instinctively I straightened by back and my tie, as if duty were calling. It turned out to be a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, Dean Black, who’s also the executive director of the Royal Canadian Air Force Association on the line. Not quite the Air Force, but, as it turned out, just as important.

“The RCAF Association has decided to recognize you and your new book with the NORAD Trophy,” Black said.

“I’m flattered,” I said, “but what’s the NORAD Trophy?” I knew that NORAD stood for North American Aerospace Defence Command and that the U.S. and Canada had formed it originally in 1957 when Cold War tensions between the Soviet Union and the West were at their highest, to ensure the protection of North America. (more…)

Barris Beat

Why has nationalism fallen from grace?

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Rally at Place du Canada in Montreal, Oct. 27, 1995. Edmonton Journal.

We travelled up Highway 401 eastbound that fall morning – from Uxbridge to Montreal – to make a statement to friends and strangers alike on the other side of the Ottawa River. We felt threatened by voices of separation in la belle province, but heartened by the “No” forces – both francophone and anglophone – that wanted Quebecers to give Canada one more chance. And that autumn day we car-pooled, bussed, hitchhiked, and rallied – some 100,000 of us – at Place du Canada in Montreal.

I remember one of our daughters who couldn’t travel with us to the pro-Canada rally that Oct. 27 morning, left a note on the bathroom mirror.

“I’m sorry I can’t go with you,” she wrote. “Please save my country.”

(more…)

Barris Beat

Greatest loss from the Great War

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Globe and Mail (Nov. 8, 2018) front page features artist Tyler Briley and his sculpted relief of Sam Sharpe installed on Parliament Hill.

In one of the first notations he jotted into his combat journal, First World War soldier Sam Sharpe recorded the actions of his rookie Canadian battalion. The 116thOntario Country Regiment was experiencing its baptism of fire in France. It was April 9, 1917, the first day of the battle of Vimy Ridge. His men were not fighting German soldiers, but laying wire in communication trenches on the Allied side of the Western Front. L/Col. Sharpe noted that his men endured a hail of artillery shells as they worked. Members of the 116th were wounded or killed, including one of his closest friends in the battalion.

“It is awfully sad,” Sharpe wrote. “Lt. John Doble was killed instantly by a shell, while leading a wiring platoon. Ontario County is paying its toll in this great struggle.”

This Sunday – for the 100thtime – at the 11thhour of the 11thday of the 11thmonth – we will gather at the cenotaph at Brock and Toronto streets in Uxbridge. (more…)

Barris Beat

Evidence we’re winning

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Jennifer O’Connell explains how MPs voted unanimously on a long-awaited installation on Parliament Hill.

During her speech at the Sam Sharpe statue unveiling, last Friday night, MP Jennifer O’Connell became emotional as she explained that the day before, Members of Parliament had voted unanimously to install Tyler Briley’s sculpture of Sam Sharpe in the Centre Block of Parliament in Ottawa.

And when Seamus O’Regan, the minister of veterans’ affairs, quizzed her about the community groundswell of support in Uxbridge that had brought this motion to the House, he seemed genuinely impressed.

“Who are these people?” O’Regan asked her. “What is it about Uxbridge?” (more…)

Barris Beat

Simple actions. Astonishing results.

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Leslie M. Miller, lieutenant in the Canadian Corps.

The padre stepped up to the lectern this past Sunday morning in Shedden, Ont. The audience at the community centre for the Remembrance service settled into silence. The clergyman unfolded his papers, that I thought would contain a prayer, a piece of scripture or perhaps the words of a hymn. But, no, he looked out at the assembly of cadets, veterans and the public in the audience and introduced his Nov. 11 thoughts this way.

“From simple actions, come astonishing results,” he said. (more…)

Barris Beat

Stitch in time

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Royal Flying Corps aircraftman James Armishaw, in 1917 tunic tailored by Beauchamp & How.

First, they told me to stand still. For an hour. Then, a man I didn’t know except through my father ran a tape measure across my shoulders, down the length of my arms, around my waist and chest. A little later, when he needed a measurement down there, he ran the tape measure from my ankle up into my crotch. I kept on smiling even though, at about age 10, I had never done this sort of thing before. The man with the tape measure finally smiled and gave me a pat on the back.

“Ted, you’re going to love this,” he said, “your first ever tailor-made suit.” (more…)

Barris Beat

The true cost of it all

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La Chaudiere Military Cemetery in France.

We arrived in the late afternoon. Shadows from an encircling grove of trees cast eerie slivers of light and dark across the manicured cemetery grounds – the grass cropped short, the flowers freshly tended. I watched one of my fellow travellers, Valerie Flanagan, move from one line of tombstones to the next. Our walk through La Chaudiere Military Cemetery just below the famous Vimy Ridge, a few days ago, was the culmination of a long journey for her. Then, she saw it – her grandfather’s grave.

“I’m so glad I made it here,” she said. “I didn’t know how I’d feel.” (more…)