On This Day: 29 August 1917

| August 29, 2017

The Military Service Act 1917 On this day, 100 years ago, Canada passed the Military Service Act mandating that all Canadian male citizens between the ages 0f 20 – 45 could be conscripted into military service. Canadian Prime Minister Robert Borden, a Conservative, having visited the Western Front during the spring of 1917 saw first […]

CHOSEN CHISELED WORDS

| August 23, 2017

Across the stone’s face, the letters have faded from view. It is our second visit to Cumberland in recent times…but some 13 years ago I first walked this place to learn of those whose lives were coal. Walking, as I do, length upon length of upright and earth lain markers I read the few lines […]

Bronze – The Reminders of their Service

| August 17, 2017

For Freedom and Honour…For Valour There is a round bronze disc about 5″ across…Britannia with a lion, a son’s or daughter’s name, and the words “HE [or SHE] DIED FOR FREEDOM AND HONOUR. One Vancouver, B.C. family to receive a Great War Memorial Plaque was the family of Captain Cecil Mack Merritt, a former officer […]

The Highway to One Man of Passchendaele

| August 11, 2017

Captain Oswald Howey Lunham, “…for now and all time” The Highway takes us up the island to our turn to the left…..to a solitary church…..near to a railway bridge…..near to a river. Sitting at my desk some while back I wrote and re-wrote the words that have become this day’s Passchendaele. A battle whose centennial […]