In the vaults of the Canadian War Museum

Today as a thank you to the volunteer guides of the Summer Program on the paintings of the First World War we were invited by the Coordinator of Volunteers of the Canadian War Museum on Le Breton Flats to an exceptional visit, a very rare event, to go underground to see where all the 84,000 artifacts of the Museum are kept and curated.

We were a small group of 12 people composed of volunteers from various other National Museums like myself who had come to help out with the Exhibits Witness and Transformations (1914-1918).
I was expecting a short visit maybe 30 minutes, sort of a general tour, we got a 90 minute tour to various rooms where various artifacts are kept in well humidified and temperature controlled rooms, look after by a staff of dedicated and knowledgeable people some of which are themselves volunteers with expert knowledge in one field or another.

We first went to see the room where the Lord Beaverbrook Canadian War Memorial Fund paintings are kept. We were able to see some pictures which were not part of the exhibit this Summer.

The Flag by John Byam Shaw, 1918. A dead Canadian Soldier wrap in the Flag of Canada at the time lying at the foot of an Imperial Lion (Britain) mourned by Canadians. A very large canvas, it has not been exhibited since 1919 when it was shown at the Royal Academy in London as part of the Canadian War paintings.

We were able to look through the collection. We then went to another room where 2 artists were preparing a diaporama of the battle of Passhendaele in Flanders, Belgium for the new exhibit which will open in November. They were working on figurines of soldiers in the 30 mm and 5 mm scale, amazing work they are doing. Recreating battle scenes in great detail. They have to hand paint each one by hand, incredible work.

Then on to the paper room where posters and sketches and small aquarelles are kept all in special boxes on shelves, again in a temperature controlled room. A lot of the drawings made by Canadian soldiers which were shown at the exhibit Witness have now been put away and will probably not be shown again for 40 years. Meaning I will never see them again in my lifetime. The paper used by the soldiers is 100 years old and all the artwork is very fragile, in most cases the paper used by the soldiers on the battlefield was not good quality, in many instances it was letter paper or scrapes of cardboard or scraps of cigarette cartons, whatever they could put their hands on. But such beautiful art work they did to express what they saw and how they felt, often with great humour despite the danger and death all around.

We then went to the weapons room, it was full of cannon balls, bombs of all kinds, torpedoes, a small submarine, World War one gun carriages, saddles for horses, etc... We got a short course on the difference between a Howitzer which has a short neck and a cannon which has a long neck. Then one person asked about how you load a cannon and how you put the fuse on the shell. So we got a demonstration, and I learned that you first fitted the fuse on top of the shell, then put the shell into the cannon and then this tubular pillow like device which explodes when the cannon is fired propelling the shell forward. Depending on the size of your cannon you could fire a shell up to 2 Km or more in distance.

Then someone asked if they could see the Sherman Tank, I like many people have heard of the Sherman Tank but had never seen one. There it was, it is about a third the size of a regular tank of today. Still it is pretty big and the model we have is a 1939 tank manufactured in Montreal. It is powered by gasoline and makes an incredible noise when the motor is started and lots of exhaust fumes.  Apparently it is difficult to start and you have to crank it by hand like the model T Ford.

There was also a very large German Gun manufactured by Krupp in Essen which is being restored and which will be part of the exhibit in November. We were shown deep indentations in the metal of the gun, this was made by shrapnel which killed the crew manning the gun.

We did not see the room where uniforms and flags are kept that in itself is also very interesting. All in all a good visit and I am very happy to have seen something that is not open to the public and can only be accessed on special permission.

www.warmuseum.ca

Salute to a brave and modest nation!

Salute to a brave and modest nation - Kevin Myers , 'The Sunday Telegraph'
LONDON :

Until the deaths of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan , probably
almost no one outside their home country had been aware that Canadian troops
are deployed in the region.

And as always, Canada will bury its dead, just as the rest of the world, as
always will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything Canada ever does..
It seems that Canada's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both
of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis is over,
to be well and truly ignored.

Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall,
waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire breaks out, she
risks life and limb to rescue her fellow dance-goers, and suffers serious injuries. 
But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes, there is Canada, the wallflower
still, while those she once helped glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely
neglecting her yet again.

That is the price Canada pays for sharing the North American continent with
the United States , and for being a selfless friend of Britain in two global
conflicts.

For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in two different directions:
It seemed to be a part of the old world, yet had an address in the new one,
and that divided identity ensured that it never fully got the gratitude it deserved.

Yet its purely voluntary contribution to the cause of freedom in two world
wars was perhaps the greatest of any democracy. Almost 10% of Canada's
entire population of seven million people served in the armed forces during the First World
War, and nearly 60,000 died. The great Allied victories of 1918 were spearheaded by
Canadian troops, perhaps the most capable soldiers in the entire British
order of battle.

Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright neglect, its
unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular memory as
somehow or other the work of the 'British.'

The Second World War provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began the war with
a half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half of the Atlantic
against U-boat attack. More than 120 Canadian warships participated in the Normandy
landings, during which 15,000 Canadian soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone.

Canada finished the war with the third-largest navy and the fourth largest
air force in the world. The world thanked Canada with the same sublime
indifference as it had the previous time.

Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged in film only if it was
necessary to give an American actor a part in a campaign in which the United
States had clearly not participated - a touching scrupulousness which, of course,
Hollywood has since abandoned, as it has any notion of a separate Canadian
identity.

So it is a general rule that actors and filmmakers arriving in Hollywood
keep their nationality - unless, that is, they are Canadian. Thus Mary
Pickford, Walter Huston,Donald Sutherland, Michael J. Fox, William Shatner, Norman Jewison, David
Cronenberg, Alex Trebek, Art Linkletter, Mike Weir and Dan Aykroyd have in
the popular perception become American, and Christopher Plummer, British.

It is as if, in the very act of becoming famous, a Canadian ceases to be
Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as unshakably Canadian as a
moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable to find any takers.

Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the achievements of
its sons and daughters as the rest of the world is completely unaware of
them. The Canadians proudly say of themselves - and are unheard by anyone else - that
1% of the world's population has provided 10% of the world's peacekeeping
forces.

Canadian soldiers in the past half century have been the greatest
peacekeepers on Earth - in 39 missions on UN mandates, and six on non-UN
peacekeeping duties, from Vietnam to East Timor, from Sinai to Bosnia.

Yet the only foreign engagement that has entered the popular non-Canadian
imagination was the sorry affair in Somalia , in which out-of-control
paratroopers murdered two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment was then disbanded in
disgrace - a uniquely Canadian act of self-abasement for which, naturally,
the Canadians received no international credit.

So who today in the United States knows about the stoic and selfless
friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan ?

Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac , Canada repeatedly does honourable things
for honourable motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it remains
something of a figure of fun. It is the Canadian way, for which Canadians should be proud,
yet such honour comes at a high cost. This past year more grieving Canadian
families knew that cost all too tragically well.

Lest we forget.

Le Jour du Souvenir

Remembrance Day was instituted to commemorate the end of the First World War on the 11th hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month in 1918.

I was at a ceremony in the Rotonda of Tabaret Hall at the University of Ottawa on Laurier street. The event was presided by our former Governor General and Commander in Chief, the Right Honourable Mikaëlle Jean.  The University Archivist had arranged an exhibit and I noticed two new plaques on the wall with the names of all the University Students who being over 18 years of age had volunteered to go to war. There were more than 1000 names, I was amazed looking at all those names, imagine 98 years ago all these young people stepping forward to go to war. At a time when people did not travel much if at all, to go to Europe by transport ship on often rough seas, knowing that you might die and never see your loved ones again. But they were motivated and thought enough of their country Canada or the Empire or God knows what, to simply go, to serve. What made me think was the fact that today in 2012 the University has about 60,000 students back in 1918 the University had less than 5,000 students, so a large proportion of them went to war.

The University had a remembrance ceremony every year until 1978. I was attending Ottawa U. then and I remember that a group of student was against such ceremony to remember our war dead. The reason being at the time that such ceremonies simply glorified war, those who served where either naive fools or part of some kind of Capitalist conspiracy. So the University President at the time an elderly priest who did not want any trouble simply caved in and the ceremony of remembrance was done away with. It was only in 1998 that it was re-instated. I remember encountering back in the 1970's and 1980's such anti-war sentiment, a lot of it had to do with the end of the Vietnam War in Asia and many people had arguments that were half-baked but were considered nonetheless by society in general. There was a real confusion on the past and the present and many who voiced opposition came from comfortable backgrounds and had never wanted for nothing in their lives. They could judge others actions without ever having met them.

Today in Canada more and more people participate in commemoration ceremony, there is a better understanding of what sacrifice means and what these men and women did for us. Maybe this is because of Afghanistan and the 10 years Canadian troops served there for a war we do not fully understand. But we can certainly understand the First or Second World War and the Korean conflict.

We should never forget their sacrifice and remember to thank those who returned for what they did.