Beaumont-Hamel ~ Beautiful Hill

A regal bronze caribou, head held skyward, stands atop a 15 metre high granite-embossed hill in France. The statue is surrounded by trees and plants native to Newfoundland, such as juniper, spruce and dogberry, and looks out across a preserved battlefield. Under this land, vacant except for small tour groups and sheep, lie hundreds of soldiers with no known grave…

Inconnu

Every Canada Day, as we are celebrating the birth of our country on this side of the Atlantic, a memorial service is held at Thiepval. And just a short walk away, on the outskirts of the Thiepval Wood, a ten-year-old visitors’ centre tells the story of the landscape’s destruction and the men who took part…

Grief’s Geography

It’s a sobering idea to grasp that, on the street you live on now, there once lived a young soldier who enlisted and died at Vimy Ridge, France, at the age of 23…

Six Saintly Seasick Sisters

Having recently learned that my Great-Great Irish aunt was a nun who sailed to a mission in Chile at the age of 29, I’m a little upset that more of her selflessness didn’t make its way directly down the bloodline to me…

November 11

Article written for Toronto Metropolitan University, 2009 (printed in The Ryersonian)