Summer 2024 newsletter

The Newfoundland National War Memorial, July 2024.

July 1 is Canada Day, where it’s a day of celebration in every province but one. 

In Newfoundland and Labrador, Memorial Day is a day of reflection and mourning.

It marks a tragedy that happened July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, a combined Anglo-French offensive that was supposed to bring World War I to an end. The Royal Newfoundland Regiment was stationed near the French village of Beaumont Hamel. Just after 9 a.m. orders were given, and nearly 800 of its soldiers entered the action.

The next day, only 68 soldiers of the Newfoundland Regiment answered at roll call.  

Their trenches had been at the top of a hill, the German trenches about 500 metres away at the bottom of that same hill. Most were slaughtered as they tried to make their way down the slope through gaps in a labyrinth of barbed wire.

I watched this year’s July 1 Memorial Day services live on TV. The remains of an unknown soldier, who died fighting with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment in WWI, had been returned to Canada from France and entombed at the Newfoundland National War Memorial in St. John’s. I’m not an overly emotional person, but at a few points I teared up during the ceremony. As to why I did that – watching remotely via an impersonal TV screen in a city half a continent away – well, that’s about story telling. 

Bear with me.  I’ll explain. 

Many Allied countries suffered horrific losses on July 1, 1916, but for Newfoundland the sacrifice was of a whole other order. At the time, Newfoundland was a self-governing dominion of the British Empire (it did not become a province of Canada until 1949). It had a small population but sent large numbers of soldiers – some 12,000 by WWI’s end. By the end of that war, hardly a family had escaped the loss of a husband, father, brother or son. Beaumont Hamel came to symbolise a nation’s grief. And its bravery.  

Parks Canada now runs the site in northern France and anyone can visit. I did, in 2001, to cover the 85th anniversary of the tragedy at Beaumont Hamel. I was a newly minted national reporter, on my first international reporting assignment and was eager to do well. I’d done extensive research in advance of the trip and thought I was prepared.

I wasn’t.

The battlefield at Beaumont Hamel is remarkably well-preserved. Many of the original trenches are still there. You can walk through them, climb up and over and look down the hill. It’s not hard to imagine the hell, the enemy fire and death, the soldiers must have seen that day. At the bottom of the hill lie the graves of many of the men of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, some of them just 17 years old. That was the moment I realised I’d could never prepare for this. I walked among those graves and cried.

No, correct that. I bawled.

There is no objective reason as to why I reacted that way. I know that the life I live, as a Canadian in a democratic country, has everything do to with the sacrifices women and men have made in wars such as these. But I had no particular connections to Beaumont Hamel: I am a Torontonian, and no one in my direct family has fought in a war.

There is a subjective reason, however. I’m a human being, and human beings relate to universal emotions. Indeed, I think all great stories, fictional or non-fictional, are anchored in two universal emotions.

Love and loss.

No matter where you are, who you are, or what language you speak you know what it is to experience love. It could be love of any number of things – love of others, love of country, love of freedom, love of justice, just to name a few.

And if you know love, then you know what it is to experience the loss of something, or someone, you love.

As I evolve as a writer, I find myself continually reminding myself of this - that I can create an infinite variety of circumstances and challenges for my characters to endure, but at the end of the day my characters’ experiences must be anchored in two universal emotions.

Being moved by the story of love and great loss is the reason why I bawled at the graves at Beaumont Hamel. And it’s why I teared up again years later watching a commemorative ceremony on TV from my home in Toronto. 

And it’s the reason why I chose this as my subject for my summer 2024 newsletter, because it’s about story telling, which I will always write about, in some way or another.

It’s also a perfect opportunity for me to make one more important point:

Lest we forget.

The tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Newfoundland National War Memorial, July 2024.