The Evolution of Christmas Eve

The magic of the Winter Solstice brings ghosts to us, haunts us like Scrooge and, for me, forces me to stare those spectres in the face and read their messages through my veins.

The pale, chained Ghost of Christmas Past needles my heart – the sharp-ended, frozen candy cane shank probes, and pokes, and pokes. 

I realise this is not the real Ghost of Christmas Past but this is how I see it.

Pricks my soul and stings my eyes.

He shows me my Granny at a dining room table playing cards.  We are Whist partners, as always.  I am a young mother.  It was the last Christmas I had with her and I was so grateful because she was able to meet her namesake.  My daughter was given Granny’s name as her first middle name. 

There was so much confusion for me.  I was nearly thirty but felt much younger.  Especially when with my mother and Granny.  It was like I was my son’s age – he was 3 then. 

I was so young.  I was having a child’s Christmas and yet I had children of my own and one of them was worried that Santa wouldn’t find us.

Santa.

The grief of being Santa that first year, when my oldest knew that Santa existed, was weighty and palpable.  If I was Santa, then the Santa of my childhood did not really exist. 

Ever.

The chained Ghost drives the candy cane point deeper into my chest.

But he had an encore appearance, a resurrection, as I became him.  And just when the two older kids teetered on the edge of losing Santa, another child came into our family to resuscitate him and keep him alive for a little while longer. 

Until last year.

Last Christmas the youngest, then 12, made a Declaration of Independence.  He declared that he was not going to be:  read to at night, “tucked in,” “play” with his lego (it had to be put away and taken out of his room), sleep with his bear Sunny, or do anything else deemed by him “baby-ish” because if he was going to high school in the fall, he had to act like a big kid.

So let it be written.

So let it be done.

And for some reason that triggered in me a yearning for the days when my children were young and I felt that old familiar grief. 

The ghost chain rattled and Santa died once more.  Unceremoniously.  No dirge.  No procession.  No eulogy.

I wept for him as I wrapped the gifts I had chosen for my older children – themed gifts that connected me to their “little” selves.  For my oldest son it was Where the Wild Things Are, for my daughter “The Little Mermaid,” and for the youngest “Lilo and Stitch.”  Each child knew the connection and message they would bring from me. 

It really, really hurt and I was so jealous of my colleagues who had small children – houses where Santa Claus was still very much alive. 

Then, in the nick of time, Christmas Present’s ghost walked through the wall, into the room, and embraced me.  I began to understand that I just needed a re-framing of how I was viewing everything.  My relationship with my children had been growing and evolving – particularly with my adult children as they graduated and started navigating early adulthood.  Why would that not extend to Christmas?

This year the youngest, newly-minted high schooler, asks “Santa” questions around who fills the stockings when and could he please play Santa on Christmas morning because he has been thinking about it for weeks? 

Enter the Ghost of Christ mas  Future to slowly slide the candy cane shank from my chest.  With the frozen candy splinter removed, I can see that the spirit of Santa moves on and one day there will be grandchildren near to resuscitate Santa once again. 

This Spirit has a great lesson for me – a salve on the sticky, minty wound in my heart.  It whispers to me that Santa never really dies.  He sleeps.  He sleeps until the children wake him again year after year, generation after generation. 

Thank you blessed Ghost. 

May your Spirit heal all whose wrists are bitten by the frozen shackles of Christmas Past and may they find love and Peace in this Christmas Present.

Blessed Be all this season.

My Righteous Indignation with Your Sunday Coffee

In his truthdig article States of Terror, Chris Hedges raises some very interesting and poignant points concerning the continuous “war on terror” which made me reflect on another on-going, seemingly unrelated issue which are receiving very similar approaches and media responses. 

Hedges’s article made me think about the gang “war” in Surrey and the South Fraser area and how similar approaches could easily end the supposed war and hysteria surrounding it.  He made me reflect upon several points I have made in the past regarding social issues which seem to never go away because we continue to take the same heavy-handed, fear based approach to situations which require love and compassion.

CBC Radio One has had a number of excellent interviews lately with journalists and UN aid workers who have had the opportunity to interview either Jihadi and ISIS fighters who have been arrested or people living in Syria and Iraq who have been dealing with occupation for a number of painful years.  The similarity in the stories of those who have joined extremist movements and those who have yet to join them are strikingly similar…duh.  Take a look.  In article after article written by or interviews with psychologists who have studied the minds and souls of “terrorists,” the theme is the same:  creating a world of “other” creates, by necessity, covert or overt cells of “together.”  

Humans die without connection and so will create connection with like-minded/souled people in the absence of connection elsewhere in their lives. 

The result of this isolation: 

Gangs

ISIS

Fraternities

Movements

Rebellion

Revolution

“Recruiters focus on forming a “social bond” with their target particularly online, using Skype and instant messaging as tools to build a relationship,” says John Horgan, a Georgia State U psychology prof who specialises in the psychology of extremism, in the Boston Herald article Inside the Mind of a Terrorist.  Another psychologist, interviewed for the same piece, points out that in France, the recruiter pitch resonates particularly strongly.  There Muslims make up about 7 percent of the country’s population, but 70 percent of its prison population.

“There’s no competing message,” said Scott Atran, director of research in anthropology at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris.

THERE IS NO COMPETING MESSAGE. 

The recruiters for gangs/ISIS/Jihadist movements embrace the unemployed, disenfranchised young men (mostly) because their message is different from the one they hear around them which repeats that they are worthless and a problem.

 I wish I could remember the name of the man interviewed on CBC R1 on Tuesday night who was saying that racial profiling and military occupation have created terrorism (not a new message).  Humanitarian approaches and a commitment to enfranchisement of those who feel dispossessed, disconnected, and dishonoured throws a blanket upon the flames of discontent in the areas of the world struggling with it the most.  If the heart of ISIS and other rebel organisations are young, dispossessed, unemployed men who feel no other choice than to use violence to win back a sense of pride and self-respect, why are we as a global community not doing something to eradicate the problems where they start? 

Why are we not creating a competing message?

Many captured fighters who have been interviewed are sharing stories of inter-generational institutional racism, profiling, and poverty under the thumb of imperial oppressors who do not respect or understand cultural differences and whose only interest is, like any imperialistic nation, plundering the human and natural resources and staking political claim.  They build a police state to quash resistance, treat the local population like criminals, and brutally grasp and horde anything they want with complete impunity.

Now tell me, if you grew up in an occupied state – especially as a boy – watching your once proud people beaten down or murdered for protesting the fascist regime; denied work and livelihood because of your religion; witnessed the desecration, denigration, and vilification of your culture and people, what options are you left with?

How would you feel if all you saw or read on news feeds sanctified the dead of the imperial nations but referred to yours as collateral damage or worse, did not acknowledge them at all? (Don’t worry.  I am all too aware, as an Aboriginal woman, how much this sounds like what happened to my ancestors.  The parallel is not lost on me.)

Why are white lives worth more than any other?

We are not separate.  We owe each other compassion and dignity because nothing ever says that because we are privileged, white, educated people that we will never be migrants or fall upon desperate times.  There are no guarantees of anything.  Ever.

How do we end gang violence in Surrey or war in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq?  It is, actually, pretty easy:

Create a competing message to the one of isolation, racism, and rejection.

1.      Treat all people with dignity and compassion – curious compassion…which is based in curiosity around how people need and work with them to get it.

2.      Create opportunities for all peoples’ basic needs to be met:

a.      Food

b.      Shelter – racist-free housing policies world wide

c.       Clean water

d.      Clothing

e.      Connection

f.        Self-respect

3.      Create opportunities for connection.  This starts early but can be rectified later.  KIDS WON’T JOIN GANGS IF THEY FEEL CONNECTED TO SOMEONE THEY KNOW CARES ABOUT THEM. PERIOD.  If we work together to create programs to address the emptiness in the lives of children who feel left behind/out, we create a different message – a new out.  More money for more police only creates more violence.  If we want to reduce the violence, we have to reduce the violence.

People who join groups want a sense of community.  If we provide loving, “healthy” communities aimed at empowering and enfranchising people, they will thrive and flourish in the communities in which they are embraced.  In addition, creating communities which welcome other cultures and seek understanding of differences rather than trying to eliminate them may very well go miles in helping new Canadians feel a part of rather than a part from.

This also means, on a geopolitical level, doing all we can to eradicate imperialism and the death clutch of corporate dominance on the planet.

But…Black Friday and the Christmas shopping rush and…

Why should I give up my hard earned:

Money

Freedom

Security

for a bunch of:

lazy junkies

dirty terrorists

potential threats

idiot delinquents?

Because, people, in the blink of an eye “we” are “them.”

And when those eyes close, how do you want people to treat you when they flash open again?

Shame! Shame! Shame! MCFD and the Government of BC

Alex Gervais is dead.

Another Aboriginal kid in care is dead not more than four months after the Paige report written by BC’s Representative for Children and Youth.  If you remember, among Turpel-Lafond’s many recommendations in the Paige report was that children in care should be absolutely nowhere near SROs (Single Resident Occupancy) or hotels as a place of permanent or temporary housing. And, in May when the report came out, Stephanie Cadieux told Turpel-Lafond that there were no kids in care living hotels.  

Hotels are no place for kids to live.  Two teenagers in Winnipeg died in provincial care while living in hotels.  Several teen aged girls report being sexually assaulted and/or introduced to drugs and alcohol while living in downtown hotels.  In Manitoba, kids in care who live in hotels are supervised by contract workers – people who are hired to merely “babysit” teenagers.  They have little or no mental health training or any social work training.  In fact, these contract workers have little or no training whatsoever regarding the needs of teens at risk.

What do governments think is going to happen when teenagers live in hotels without significant adult connections or significant adult to watch over, check in, or otherwise care for them?  Kids at risk are just going to take care of themselves, I guess.

In Alex’s case, let’s place the blame at the feet of those who really deserve it:  the provincial government.  The government cut funding and shut down the group home in which Alex lived. 

This government’s consistent marriage to their policies of austerity and their obsession with the “balanced budget” is consistently being borne on the backs of those who are the most vulnerable in our province.  Worse than that, this policy is being borne on the backs of the most vulnerable children in this province.

I desperately try, on a daily basis to help kids like Alex and Paige put their lives back together.  I try to work with them and to work with the eroding systems which consistently work against us.  The harder we try to put it all back together, the more difficult MCFD makes it for us. 

It’s like trying to build a sandcastle in a monsoon.

How is this continuing to be ok? 

Why is it acceptable to this government that some children are treated in ways that would be unacceptable if their own children were treated in the same way?  Why are we, as a society, allowing the most vulnerable children to be treated in the most horrific ways?

How is this continuing to be acceptable and permitted in this province?  Why are we doing nothing about it?

None of these children asked to be placed in these situations.  None of them asked to be born into these hurting families.  None of them asked to be born into lives in which they are neither loved nor wanted.

The Representative for Children and Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, has suggested that there are strong indications that Alex took his own life.  If this is indeed the case, all this shows us is that, once again, cracks in the Child and Youth Mental Health system in this province have precipitated a desperate youth to take his own life.  I have ranted many a time and oft about the complete lack of supports for youth with mental health needs - particularly for kids in care and particularly for Indigenous children in care.

Child and Youth services of any kind in this province are a fucking joke…no…a nightmare.  There is absolutely nothing funny about MCFD, especially the Aboriginal department.  Social workers reneging on signed agreements – worse – bold faced lying about signing papers or claiming that the meeting during which the papers were signed never happened.   All of the lies and game playing to get out of paying a student’s fees. 

How do you sleep at night, Stephanie Cadieux?  Your ministry’s ineptitude is killing the children with whom you are charged with protecting.

How do you sleep at night, Suzanne Anton?  Where is your response to the recommendations from the many reports out of Turpel-Lafond’s office?

How do you sleep at night, Christy Clark?  Child after child dies under your watch and the only time you acknowledge the loss is when it serves as a photo op for you!

All three of you should be ashamed!  How do you allow these children to live in conditions in which you would never allow your own children to live?

  

How many more children have to die before we get angry enough to actually do something or demand that something be done?  The recommendations have been given and have not been followed. 

When do we hold our governments accountable to those who cannot speak for themselves? 

When do we admit that “austerity” economics is just a covert (or not so covert) attempt to destroy the poor, the sick, the old, and the vulnerable? 

When will we realise that, in the words of the great Welsh band, The Manic Street Preachers, “if you tolerate this then your children will be next”?

The Last Day: Torches and Towers

The last day, July 24^th, we visited a number of cemeteries as we meandered our way back to Paris and CDG airport.

We started the day back at Essex Farm Cemetery, aka McCrea’s dressing station bunker.  As I said in my last post, one of our tour mates stayed behind the day we visited Essex Farm the first time and she wanted to visit it.  She was prepared with a copy of Flander’s Fields so she could read it – or have someone read it – in the field of poppies behind the cemetery.

Essex Farm Cemetery

By this time I had become known to the group as “the keener” and, as I was to learn later in the evening, “the trench poet,” so it really was no surprise to me that my tour mate asked me to read the poem in this sacred place.  Honestly, I was really hoping to be able to recite it there anyway so the invitation was an answered prayer of sorts. 

Since getting back into the routine of my daily life, when people find out I did this tour, I am frequently asked to describe the highlights of my trip; this is one of those moments.  For artists, visiting the birth place of a seminal work of art is really life changing.  I know I have used that phrase many times during the relaying of my trip but I really cannot think of any other way to describe it.  Standing in that poppy field beside the bunker where McCrea treated the wounded, gazing out onto the cemetery where those he tried to help were buried, was exhilarating – I get goose bumps every time I recall the moment.  I could have even been standing on the very spot where the poem was penned…all of this ran through my mind as I took a breath to start the poem. 

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses row on row  

(I looked to the rows of white stones behind the fence in front of me and felt the energy of that moment prickle my skin into goose bumps)

That mark our place,  and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing fly

Scarce heard amidst the guns below.

(The cemetery is on a very busy motor way which has a rumble of its own – not guns of course but another representation of the modern world encroaching upon those who sleep restlessly there.  Larks were, indeed singing above the din of the motor way…and I heard every single note as I recited that line.)

We are the dead.  Short days ago

We lived, Saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders’ fields.

(At this point I almost had to stop reciting because I could not speak.  Here I was, some lost traveller from another time, standing in this sacred ground reciting this heart-wrenching lamentation for a lost, beloved friend to the dead in the cemetery only a few feet before me.  The lump in my throat was painful.  There they were…the dead who had lived, saw sunset glow, loved and were loved…and I was speaking to them – directly to them.  It was all too much for a few seconds.)

Take up our quarrel with the foe

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch – be yours to hold it high;

(In that moment my mind took me, once again, to the marble figure on the Vimy Memorial brandishing the torch and I wanted to catch the torch, too.  I wanted to catch it from the failing hands of those lying in that cemetery in front of me.)

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep though poppies grow

In Flanders’ fields.

(I wanted to shout a promise to those dead, and to the dead who lay in pieces in the fields all around me for miles and miles, that as long as there was breathe left in me I would be sure to keep the faith.  I wanted to shout and declare and make some grand gesture to prove my fidelity…but in the end I was silent.  I was silent and let my recitation be that promise.)

I needed a moment after reciting the last lines of the poem.  I just wanted to stand in that moment and memorise it in my cells so that whenever I heard, or recited the poem, I would always feel the connection to it I felt that day in that poppy field reciting to the dead who slept in Essex Farm Cemetery.

There were a couple of standout cemeteries on that day, one we had planned to visit and one we stumbled across while visiting another cemetery.  We planned to visit Caix British Cemetery and stepped out to have a look.  It is a small cemetery off of a side road on the edge of a wheat field.  It holds a number of Canadian Military Cross winners and, for the hat badge geek in me, a number of hat badges I had not seen previously.  I snapped a number of pics here and wandered over to the other cemetery we noticed on the drive in to where we parked near Caix Cemetery.

Caix German Cemetery

It turned out that the other cemetery was a German cemetery:  Caix German Cemetery.  The eerie black metal crosses did not seem as foreboding in this shade-dappled place.  What a difference the bright July sun made to the German cemetery.  The first such cemetery I visited during a rainy, grey day.  On this day, the sun seemed to bring a melancholy dignity to the place and seemed to lift some of the heaviness. 

Caix German Cemetery

This was a dignified, peaceful place.  The shame which seemed to cloud places like Neuve Chapelle and Langemark did not appear to exist here.  There was a heaviness of homesickness – a longing to be home – but there was no indication that any of these men felt ashamed to have died here.  Perhaps because many of those in this cemetery perished during the last hundred days – the days of the Kaiserschlacht – the Kaiser’s last push to win the war.  During these battles, even more so than any other battle, the Germans gave everything they had.  The men in Caix German cemetery died with the knowledge that they had done everything they could to win and they did not feel let down by themselves or their comrades.  This may not be the case for those in Neuve Chapelle near Arras.  The early days were not awesome for anyone but the German soldiers, in particular, felt disorganized and forgotten by their leadership.  Reflecting upon those differences helps me to see the differences in the “feel” of those two German cemeteries.

Our last cemetery was Beaucourt Military Cemetery.  Beau, for those who speak French know, is “beautiful” in French.  This tiny cemetery on the hill was, indeed, beautiful and included in my list of the most peaceful cemeteries I had visited. 

Beaucourt Cemetery

Surrounded by poplars and birch, nestled against a wheat field, this cemetery holds a number of men from British tank battalions and Canadian soldiers killed during the Last Hundred Days of fighting.  Norm shared some very interesting stories about these men and we piled back into the van to head to the hotel near the airport.

We had a wonderful last night: dinner and drinks in the hotel and then someone (who shall remain nameless – and it wasn’t me) decided that we had to go to Paris to the Pere Lachaise cemetery and the Eiffel Tower.  By the time we got to Paris it was around 11 at night and, of course, the cemetery was closed but the Eiffel Tower was magnificent by night.  We wandered around for a while and made the hour cab ride back to our hotel.  It was an awesome night.

My trip ended with the same Paris magic with which it had begun – unplanned and unexpected – a surrender to the adventure. 

The life lessons I have gleaned from this trip, I have discovered, have been both easy and very difficult to describe and to convey.  Some have been beyond words and even my photographs cannot capture the experience in a way that matches the emotional/spiritual experience. 

I hope to return to France and Belgium in two years, to do another tour with Norm and to learn more about these sacred fields.  Next time my focus will be on poets – the true trench poets of the Great War – and the lessons they have for a colonial teacher from the prairies, and mountain valleys,  of the Empire.

The "Iron Harvest"...when things just don't want to match up

Where the 22^nd of July had so many overwhelming moments: from the sea of headstones to the endless columns of names of the missing, to relief for learning a way to see the experience in a new, life affirming way, the 23^rd of July was almost the opposite.  The spirit linking the experiences was not one of sameness but one of contrast.  So many moments of this day were incongruous:  from healing to murder; from cemeteries on the busiest of roads to finding them, once more in beautiful, peaceful places making them more like parks than places where the dead rest; from realising once again that deep below the surface of the fertile fields lie, what Scott called, the “iron harvest.” So many strange pairings on this day.

The whole day had really strange “energy” right from the start.  We were down a body because my female compatriot, Elaine, was exhausted and wanted to stay behind and rest.  With a person missing, the van really wasn’t the same.  I think, too, that is many ways I wasn’t “over” the visits of the previous day.  There were a lot of big emotions to process, as I shared in the last post, and that depth of experience really needed time and distance to settle.  In addition to all of that, it was our second to last day of the tour…really our last day of just visiting cemeteries.  The next day we would be returning to Paris to the hotel near the airport and preparing to return to Canada.  I was not really sure if I really wanted to go home yet.  I missed my family but I was enjoying learning all that I had learned and I was not sure that I wanted that to end just yet.

Working through that now, I see that with all of those conflicting feelings, this second to last day could not have been anything other than incongruous…it makes sense that nothing seemed to just come together like it did the day before.  Even subtleties of the day conflicted, or had interesting ironies about them.  Let’s start with our first stop of the day (…see what I did there?).

 

We started our day at the bunker where Canadian field doctor John Mc Crae worked for seventeen days during the Second Battle of Ypres in his dressing station and the place where he was inspired to write In Flanders Fields. 

McCrea's bunker

McCrae was an epidemiologist from an Ontario hospital before the war.  After his time in the dressing stations in Flanders, he moved on to France where he worked at the head of a hospital.  He died in 1918 of pneumonia…a doctor of infectious diseases died of an infectious disease…see where this day is going?  I told you the energy of the day was strange.

Back to the bunker:  this is the place where Dr. Mc Crae tried desperately, in desperate conditions, to make shattered men whole and where he lost his best friend Alexis Helmer.  It was extremely powerful to be there in that place where a piece of Art was born.  Admittedly, I am not the biggest fan of the poem as a poem but, rather, find respect for it as a commentary piece.  Its importance lies in what it represented and how the soldiers of the day said, time and again, how it perfectly described the conditions, the world of the war.  On a warm summer’s day, there are plenty of poppies in that place.  There were the days I visited.

Essex Farm Cemetery - the cemetery connected to McCrea's
dressing station.  The hill in the background is covered
with poppies.

We returned to this place the following day, on the 24^th, to give Elaine a chance to see it.  I will revisit the experience on that day in another post because it has magic of its own.

Our next stop was the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery.  This cemetery was interesting because it was a hospital cemetery and we had not visited a hospital cemetery to that point.  The headstones rather than being placed “willy nilly,” as they were in some cemeteries (especially cemeteries which were original to the battlefields) were in perfect rows, the names were in alphabetical order, and in order of the date of death.  In addition, there was a headstone of a nursing sister- only one of two buried in the whole of France from this time period.  I found this very interesting.

This cemetery was large but did not have the same heaviness of Tyne Cot or the Menin Gate.  Unlike Tyne Cot or Menin Gate, this place had no consistency of “feeling” or “energy.”  Some sections felt peaceful or resigned while others, it seems, resonated fear and resistance…feelings I am sure many of those men felt in their last, tortured days in the hospital surrounded by varying degrees of suffering, dying, and death or, for some, comfort. 

In order to access the cemetery, you have to go through an information centre which explained the difference between field hospitals, dressing stations, hospitals, and so on.  There were pictures, maps and diagrams of the area, how the light rail systems were set up to deliver supplies to the front lines and bring back the wounded on the return trip.  What this meant was, if you had a rail map of the area from the Great War, chances are that today cemeteries, along the same route, were probably dressing stations of some kind.  Again, the history comes to life when you have this information.  With that knowledge, it makes sense now why so many of the cemeteries, on that day, were connected to field hospitals – they were all on the light rail route connecting them to Lijssenthoek field hospital/cemetery.

 

A photo in the info centre of a Canadian field hospital

Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, Belgium

This cemetery held German headstones as well, much to my surprise.  It seems that during this war, in some parts of the front, wounded German prisoners of war received the same quality of medical care that the Entente soldiers received.  This is a tremendous contrast to later conflicts during which POWs were treated like animals rather than human beings. 

After another cemetery along the former light rail lines, we stopped in Poperinghe (Petit Ypres) to check out the area where the shooting post remains. The shooting post, as you have guessed, is the post to which deserters of the British forces were tied for execution by firing squad.  A couple of Canadian soldiers were executed for desertion.  In a cell in Poperinghe, adjacent to the shooting post is a collection of a number of holding cells, their walls made of blocks of chalk.  On one of those walls, one of the soon to be executed Canadian soldiers carved a facsimile of his hat badge. 

The Canadian hat badge carved into the wall 

The shooting post

Needless to say, this space was not a pleasant one in which to hang out for any length of time so I made note of the place, took photos of the carving in the wall, and made my quick exit.  Between the cramped cell, the limited light, and the ooze of terror, shame, and injustice seeping from the place, I really could not be in the space for long.  My skin was crawling from all that I have just described.  I was happy to leave that space and head over to the café for a coffee with “the boys.”

After Poperinghe, we moved on to another fairly large cemetery: Reninghelst New Military Cemetery.  I enjoyed this cemetery for its diversity.  Here there were a number of different nationalities which I had not seen represented previously in other cemeteries.  An example of this is the representation of members of the Chinese Labour Corps who worked on the major projects of the war such as the building of rail lines, communication trenches, services, sapping (tunneling), and all other manner of labour required to keep the war machine moving. 

A Good Reputation Endures Forever is inscribed on many of these headstones, along with the name of the individuals in Chinese characters.

In addition to the Chinese headstones, I also found a number of South African headstones with the information and personal inscriptions written in Afrikaans, illustrating the policy of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) that the culture and language of the individuals serving in the war would be preserved and honoured on their headstones – an interesting policy from a country that was hell-bent on homogenizing the planet through imperialism…but I digress.

In 100% contrast to Poperinghe and the shooting post, Norm took us to La Plus Douve Farm Cemetery, one of the most beautiful cemeteries I had visited during the entire trip – easily in my top three.  This tranquil cemetery is part of a working dairy farm, nearly smack in the middle of the farm, actually.  To the right of the cemetery is a shell crater which over time has become a beautiful pond complete with bulrushes and water lilies.  The farmer has built a wharf and decking at the edge of the “pond” allowing sunbathers to bask in the sun near the water on days like the day we were there.  One hundred year old oak and maple trees surround the cemetery, shading the roses and lavender blooming beside the headstones. 

La Plus Douve Cemetery

A weeping willow tree grows in the far right corner of the cemetery (when the pond is on your right), an extraordinary place to sit, prop up against its trunk, and read for a while.  One could very easily forget that this place was a cemetery – it felt more like a park or a private garden…hushed with love and peace.  There was absolutely no anguish here.  This would be a place where the souls would swim and fish and dream in the willow shade for eternity…completely in peace.  All one could do in the presence of all this was just to sigh.  Really.  Just to sigh.

The last couple of stops I want to mention were, to no one’s surprise, in contrast to the  La Plus Douve Cemetery.  Voormezeele Enclosure is the final resting place for a number of soldiers Norm affectionately referred to as “Agar’s boys.”  Agar Adamson was a key figure to many of the “lads” from some of the Ontario divisions.  He was an older man when the war started and quickly became a father figure for many of the young men in his command.  In the Voormezeele Enclosure, at least four of Agar’s officers and some of his soldiers are buried.  Agar kept a detailed journal and wrote to his wife daily, sometimes more than once per day.  Through his journal and his letters, his days in the Great War can be vividly recalled. 

The dates on the headstones of Lt. Donald Ewan Cameron, Lt. F. D. Farquhar D.S.O (Distinguished Service Order), Lt. H.C. Buller D.S.O, and  H. G. Bellinger coordinate with many of Agar’s letters and his description to his wife of the loss of these men. He was heartbroken by the losses.  His letters and biography have been lovingly reprinted by Norm Christie and can be purchased through his web site CEF Books.  Look ‘em up.  The letters are beautifully written and give a high ranking officer’s view of the war – from a commander who, contrary to the stereotype of the Great War, cared a great deal for his “boys.”  Agar was a gentleman when being a gentleman was a way of life.  Check him out.  You will not be disappointed.

The Voormezeele Enclosure also gave me an example of someone who had died under an assumed name but whose name was found out after his death and engraved on his headstone.  Norm had told us about these stones but, until now, I had not found one.  This stone was particularly interesting because not only did this young man enlist under an assumed name, he also enlisted as a completely different religion. 

Joseph Page enlisted in the 18^th battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Forces (CEF) and died in Flanders on April 10, 1916. 

When Norm did his research into this young man, he discovered that Joseph identified himself as a Christian on his enlistment papers.  Joseph many have served as Joseph Page, Christian but, back home, Joseph was Joseph Rousinhtol whose family was of Jewish faith.  All of this was discovered when the family returned the paperwork after Joseph’s death.  So, Joseph is buried under a Star of David rather than a Latin Cross. 

The Served As inscriptions made me imagine an entire, complex back story for this soldier – one where he was afraid to “out” himself as Jewish for fear of…discrimination?...harassment?...isolation?  All are very possible from what I have read about the lives of Jewish soldiers in the British forces – most notably the poet Isaac Rosenberg, who was brutally treated by other soldiers in his corps. 

Brutal.  Fear enough to denounce your faith - the faith of your ancestors.  In death, at least, his ancestors found him.

After a few more stops, our day was winding down.  We stopped so Scott could grab some pics of a monument to some of the fliers of the war.  At this particular stop, Norm explained the march to Kitchener’s Wood which took place late one night in April 1915.  We looked across a potato field to a copse of trees in the distance – Kitchener’s Wood today.  I tried to capture it in a photograph…to little success.

Beside where we parked was a large dairy farm, the farm owned by the family whose potato field leads to Kitchener’s Wood.  Norm has a friendly relationship with this farmer from days when he filmed For King and Empire in this field and encouraged us to wander over to the farm and see if there were any shells in his driveway.  Sure enough.  Just inside of the drive way was a pile of shells and hand grenades ploughed up from his field probably when he planted his potato crop. 

 

The shells from the potato field

Again, in keeping with the day’s leit motif of incongruity, this moment was difficult to process:  these instruments of death found during a process designed to produce life.  A “harvest of iron,” as Scott wrote about it later on the picture of the shells I posted on line.  It really is hard to believe that a century later these shells are still being brought to the surface – many of them still “live” – as if no time has passed.  They are oxidized and often mud encrusted but are still deadly.  Crazy!

We meandered our way back to Ypres, past a farmer’s field with four cement bunkers still as intact as they were a century ago; horses and cattle grazing around them…just a meaningless piece of their environment…a bizzaro world of green grass, summer sunshine, and scars of a one hundred year old war.  Just didn’t seem to match up in my head.

Later that night, as I re-packed my suitcase, I thought about that field, the shells, and the farms and thought about how amazing this place was:  this beautiful country with its rich fertile fields appearing for all the world like an Eden but, for those who know the history of the places, carrying, deep in its soil, the soul wrenching anguish of loss, destruction, and barrenness.

I was happy that we still had a few more hours to spend, the next day, in this land of contrast.  I wanted a little more before heading home.  I wasn’t quite done yet.

The Bearable Lightness of Being: July 22 from August 31

I have been home for over a month and have not really finished the commentary on my trip.  I did not mean for that to happen – it just sort of did.  I also needed a little time and distance to really process the trip, how it affected me at the time, and how, with hindsight, I have been changed by the whole experience.  So let me catch you up on the last part of the trip and I will also share with you a couple of my experiences that I didn’t have a chance to share with you while they happened.

My last entry was on the 22^nd of July when I shared my breakthrough around the difference between feeling the grief of those sacred places and stealing the grief – making the experience about me and not the dead.  Not cool and not healthy.  I also shared what I had learned about the lessons the cemeteries teach and how not all of those cemeteries are soaked in sadness; how some of them are peaceful and really lovely.  

The 22^nd was a very busy day.  We had, as usual, a jam-packed day of cemetery visits but on this day, there were a series of experiences which brought me to those moments of clarity.

I actually started the day really early so I could get into Ypres (not the modern spelling but I just can’t use Iepres) and take pics of the city without all of the other tourists milling around. 

St. Mathew's Cathedral, Ypres

The Ypres cloth hall

The Menin Gate road

The morning was beautiful and, as you can see, I got some really wonderful images.

What I see now, from this distance, is that the day was all about the massive scale of loss in this part of the Western Front during those four years of destruction.  The columns and columns of names on the Menin Gate made an impression on me the day before when we did our town tour with Norm but I didn’t really have the time to soak it all in.  

That morning when I was alone with those names, the weight of it really hit me.  It really felt like the names went on forever – the Canadian names – from a country that really did not have much of a population to begin with yet. 

 

Name after name after name.  They flowed over me – a surge of lives, of longing, of loss.  At the time, I did not realise that this was the theme of that day.  So many lives.  So much loss.  And just under the surface, I now see, was this ache:  all of those names represented men whose bodies were never found.  The only way we know, their people know, they were there is from the letters carved in this marble on these slabs.

[I know my tenses get all funky but I find myself going back to the moment and experiencing it in a “present tense” kinda feel.  Please exercise patience with my “tense jumping.”  Thank you.]

I really felt the weight of the emptiness.  Perhaps that was the beginning of the lesson I wrote about that night after returning to my room:  the duty to put stories to those letters in the marble so the lives of those missing men rematerialize – flesh out the holograph of who they were.  Make them real again and, in so doing, give them all chances at immortality…not for any great heroic propagandistic bullshit (as I learned since from Louis Barthas, barrel maker, in the memoir Poilus, many of those “common soldiers” were there because they had no choice – no heroism for them…just muddy, bloody death)…but because they had no other choice but to die when told to do so.  To me that is a pretty good reason to have someone, 100 years on, give your death some meaning somehow; to give the life meaning, too.

And this was just the first half-hour of that day, in a day filled with moments just like that one.

When I got to the top of the stairs (the Menin Gate has stairs to the left and right around the centre section) and stepped into the garden, one of my tour buddies was there – Elaine.  She was of a similar mind and, clearly had the same idea to get a moment alone with the names on the gate.  I asked her if she wanted to be alone but she said she had her moment.  We wandered around Ypres together – her following me and I have no sense of direction – eventually ending up back at the hotel for breakfast, albeit a little later than she wanted.  I grabbed some more pics of the buildings of Ypres and got myself psyched for the rest of the day

This day had several stand out moments and seem to have the theme established by my morning at the Gate.  This day we visited:  Langemark Cemetery, St. Julien (The Brooding Soldier Memorial), Canada’s Road, Tyne Cot Cemetery, and a couple of really beautiful cemeteries in the middle of a forest (Woods Cemetery and The Bluff Cemetery).  Of course there were more but these were the moments that really stood out for me, especially Langemark, Tyne Cot, and Woods/The Bluff Cemeteries.

Langemark. 

Anyone who has visited feels a visceral “catch” at the name.  The thick, black basalt crosses imprint on you – that weight of emptiness again…like those names in the marble.  

Langemark Cemetery

All I could think about was Kathe Kollwitz's sculptures The Grieving Parents, and the same ache returned from earlier in the day at the Gate. 

Here, though, unlike the Gate, there was another layer of pain.  Langemark is a German cemetery for recovered bodies and for the missing in the Ypres salient.  The names of their dead, the dead, young student soldiers who died “...like children…” (in the words of Eric Maria Remarque from All Quiet on the Western Front) are carved in oak in a small room at the front of the cemetery. 

Imagine being an “enemy” buried in the land you and your comrades “lost” to.  Such a heavy burden for a truly proud people.  The complexity of feeling is so palpable there, especially as a German.  My father’s people were Prussian, immigrating to Canada in the 1880s.  My mother’s father was also of German heritage…so much blood of “the Hun” in my viens.  

Some subterranean, subtle shame lingers there – coats the soil with its oily layer, never really dispelled.  Hitler’s visit there during the Third Reich doesn’t really help the situation, either. 

Shame after shame after shame. 

Now that I think about it, I felt that same feeling at Neuville-St. Vaast, and Caix German Cemetery, two other German cemeteries filled with those black iron crosses.  How must it have been for families of those men/boys?  Your sons lie in the fields of those who cursed you and wished all manner of ill will upon you even though your “boys” were only doing the same duty as the others.  How would those souls ever find peace with such anger directed at them?

To add insult to injury, Langemark was being “cleaned up” by moderns.  This made me really angry.  What kind of arrogance to think that we can improve on what was created to show respect to those who rested there immediately after the conflict?  Those basalt crosses were being moved and the other pieces of Art placed there were missing (the Grieving Comrades iron sculpture was missing, for example).  This issue is best left for another post altogether…I have lots of ire for those who think they know better than the originators of these sacred places.

After Langemark we headed over to the Brooding Soldier Monument at St. Julien.  This is a powerful monument but it somehow lacks connection.  Norm explained that the monument site was chosen for maximum visibility, not for historical reasons.  The actual location of the battles for which the monument was built is several miles ahead and over, in the middle of a farmer’s field.  The Canadian government decided to place it on a street corner rather than connect it to the actual location of importance.  Not really that surprising because…government.  The lack of connection I felt now made sense.  Nice sculpture, no soul.  Kinda defeats the purpose.

The Brooding Soldier Monument

Norm took us to the place where the Brooding Soldier should have been:  the location where the Canadians held the bulge/the break in the lines at Passchendaele. 

Passchendaele.  The name, like so many others in this place, is steeped with so much…anguish, pride, I dunno…confusion, betrayal.  This cocktail of emotion reminds me now, in hind-sight, of Beaumont-Hamel:  the charnel house that was one of the Somme Battlefields.  The main difference is that those who lived in the mud of Passchendaele, at least came out “victorious” in more battles than they did on the Somme.  There was, at least a sense of justification in the loss in some ways…that pride I spoke of.  Like at Vimy, the Canadians held on there when no one else could. 

At the end of a street, aptly titled “Canada’s Road,” is a very small park bracketed by houses on the one side and massive corn and wheat fields on the other.  In the center of the park is a stone block to mark the place the Canadians held.  As a monument it totally lacks any imagination and heart (another topic for another time).  The Brooding Soldier would have been a perfect marker for this spot.  Standing “…on guard…” for those enriching the fields all around that site. 

Canada's Road

The Passchendaele monument

The fields surrounding the park in Passchendaele

Like Beaumont-Hamel, this little park at the end of Canada’s Road, made me uneasy.  Like there was unfinished business there, somehow…a frenetic energy waiting for release.  Maybe that’s what was so unsettling about those sites: not the grief but the longing, the waiting, the wish to be free from the burden of that soil, that sarcophagus of mud.

Tyne Cot Cemetery

Tyne Cot Cemetery was the next stop; another note in the theme begun in the early morning in Ypres at the Menin Gate. 

Tyne Cot is massive.  Easily the largest cemetery we visited on this trip.  Facts:  it is the largest Commonwealth Cemetery in the world, holding 11, 871 Commonwealth graves – 966 Canadians (554 are unidentified).  In addition to the graves, there are names of an additional 34,000 British, 1179 New Zealanders, and 1 Newfoundlander with no known graves carved into the marble slabs at the back of the cemetery…nearly 50,000 souls memorialised here.  There are so many burials that the Cross of Sacrifice sits atop ten layers of marble slabs (the height and size of the CoS indicates the number of dead found in the cemetery).  To give you an idea of the impact of this in relation to other sites:  the Cross of Sacrifice of smaller cemeteries sits atop one or two marble slabs, depending upon the number of dead in the cemetery.

This place gave me one of my three “break down” moments of the trip.  The “break down” I wanted could not take place and needed to be much more subtle because the cemetery was very busy.  I perched myself atop the marble slabs, under the Cross of Sacrifice, and tried to capture the size of the cemetery with its nearly literal sea of headstones.  I couldn’t.  There were too many to fit into one panorama shot (in my camera, as I am sure in others, a panorama shot is made from three regular sized pictures).  I needed nearly three.

The ocean of headstones at Tyne Cot Cemetery

Sitting up there it hit me, just as hard as it did earlier that morning, all of those stones were people – someone’s son, father, brother, husband, fiancée, boyfriend, student, friend…someone’s beloved.  And they died far, far away from home. 

The volume, the sheer numbers can numb you when you read them but when you sit among “…the millions of mouthless dead…” as Charles Sorley called them, you feel it…the weight of emptiness, as I called it earlier…a white noise of feelings, voices, souls. 

Every current of energy there that day was reaching out: the longing to connect; the desire to remember and be remembered; the desperation to fill the void of time and death, to touch the dead, to heal the living now and then. 

It was both fascinating and exhausting to be there.  So much going on.

After a few more stops, our official day was over and Norm drove back to the hotel to give people the option to go see more of Ypres and have the opportunity to get supper before the nightly Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate.  Anyone else who wanted to see some more cemeteries could stay in the van and head out with Norm and Scott.  I came on this trip to see cemeteries, not shop, so I stayed behind with Norm and Scott and one other tour member and off we went.

On this impromptu trip is where I got my best education.  We visited several hidden gems: Woods Cemetery, The Bluff, and Hedgerow Cemeteries – several of the most peaceful cemeteries I had visited since Bedford House Cemetery on our first day in Belgium.  The last two were hidden in a forest off of a side road off of a side road.  To reach The Bluff and Hedgerow, you had to walk through a field into a forest and follow a labyrinth of dirt foot paths.  The cemeteries appeared out of the middle of the forest like fairy rings:  green, lush, and surrounded by the beautiful flowers: blue hydrangeas, lavender, corn flowers. 

Hedgerow Cemetery

One of the packs at Hedgerow Cemetery

Contents of one of the packs at Hedgerow Cemetery

Hedgerow even had three or four kit packs on marble slabs outside of the cemetery.  The packs had been preserved in a resin of some kind and the contents of the kits had been preserved in a block of yellowing epoxy - the DNA in the amber holding the secrets of yesterday.  The packs gave the cemetery weight, a presence, making the place personal – those straps touched someone who maybe rests here.  Seeing it now, I feel like those packs comforted me somehow…the weight was no longer empty…there was body there – the fleshed out hologram.

I think, too, that the feeling of substance I experienced at Hedgerow came out of the lesson I learned from Norm at Woods Cemetery.  My post on the 22^nd was dominated by that lesson: the “you can’t go there” lesson.  The lesson of not making the sadness about me.  The lesson of not putting myself in a place of grief that I could not possibly understand.  The lesson of not borrowing the sorrow of others.  It was almost like Norm helped me find my place in this whole process – the process of processing the history of this place…an appropriate connection to the emotions of the history without making it about me.  I’ve already written about this so I won’t go into it any further than that. 

I will, however say that it was a perfect way to end that day.  Everything seemed to come full circle:  from the heaviness of emptiness and separation to the healing power of connection; finding a way to honour those names, whether carved in marble or oak, with peace rather than sorrow; and from the white noise of the restless dead to the places where they have found peace. 

The day was complete.  Perfect.  The best way to prepare for those final days in this epicentre of sacred places.