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| THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES |
| Web photographs of Canadian war graves
link us to our heroic past |
| IN FAMILY MEMORIES, my
Uncle Richard will always be the tough, amiable guy who prowled the
turbulent Halifax waterfront of the 1930s. A quiet man, dubbed "Buster"
by his six doting siblings, he preferred a duck hunt in the rural mist
to his stevedore chores. And although he never started a brawl, he was
not afraid to finish one. He once told two Americans to stop beating up
a hapless Newfoundlander. When they turned on him, Buster polished them
off in seconds. Oblivious to his father's lectures about the need for a
university education, all he ever wanted was to be a policeman. But his
Armenian face with its startling blue eyes, and his strange name and
his struggling immigrant parents, were too alien for that long-ago
Halifax. His application was rejected. When the Second World War
erupted, he joined the merchant marine, then transferred to the North
Nova Scotia Highlanders. A German sniper shot him between the eyes on
Sept. 17,1944 near
Boulogne, France. His stark white marker stands proudly, and a mite
forlornly, in the nearby Calais Canadian War Cemetery. |
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I have never been there. But a few weeks ago, I finally saw a
photo
of his stone, with that sad little phrase "beloved son" and my
grandparents' names?of Steve Douglas and his herculean Maple Leaf Legacy project. Douglas, now 47, was a freelance graphic designer
and photographer living in London, Ont., in 1997
when
| he
was inspired by a photo of an uncle's war grave, which he had taken two
years before on a trip to England and pinned to his office wall. What, he wondered, about others who never get to
see a family member's grave? Why |
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not use digital cameras to photograph themand post them on-line free of charge? Anyway,
how long could it take? |
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| Today, Douglas lives alone in Ypres, Belgium, within four hours of 1,400 Commonwealth war cemeteries, managing a
bookstore devoted to British military history
by day and updating his archives by night. So much for blithe plans: it
turns out there are more than 115,000 Canadian war graves from the Boer
War, the First and Second World Wars, the Korean
War and peacekeeping missions, scattered across 74 nations,
ranging from Burma to France. |
| Six years after he started his odyssey,
without a cent of government funding, Douglas and
more than 430 avid volunteers have accumulated
65,000 photographs of war graves. The first posting, several hundred
photos, is slated to appear on-line this Remembrance Day. (In the
interim, Douglas has mailed or e-mailed photos on request, asking for a
$50 donation afterwards-if the recipient can afford it.) He now figures
it will take until 2014, the centenary of the outbreak of the First
World War, to complete the task. His site, www.mapleleaflegacy.ca,
has engulfed
his life. "It's very satisfying and very humbling;" he says. "There is
still a lot of ignorance about Canada's role in
the wars." |
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After decades of neglect, Canada is belatedly
exploring its wartime history. Three years
ago, the Toronto-based Dominion Institute, with
Ottawa's support, created the Memory Project, which includes a digital
archive of the recollections of more than 300 servicemen,
spanning almost 85 years of military experience. The mere sound of
elderly voices cracking with emotion as they relate past turmoil is
touching. Second World War vet Barney Danson, a former Trudeau era defence minister, thinks the celebrations on the 50th
anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944, began this slow process of remembering
our wartime past. "I OFTEN THINK of those young men who never lived to be veterans," he says.
`They earned the medals and never got to wear
them.'
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| Too often, the federal government
itself forgets those perilous times--and their survivors.
Last winter, Vic Leach, outgoing manager of B.C.'s New Westminster
Seniors' Bureau, organized a veterans' meeting to discuss benefits. To
his surprise, hundreds responded. And they related difficulties in
obtaining access to everything from the Veterans
Independence Program, which provides services such as housecleaning, to
extended health benefits such as enhanced pharmacare.
Many did not even know they were eligible for disability pensions. So
far, Leach has secured pensions, services and benefits worth roughly $730,000 per year for about 110
vets. He is flabbergasted by their timidity-and
the bureaucracy's rigidity. "The veterans are afraid of taking too
much;" he says. "I keep saying, `No, this is what you are entitled to.
You risked your life for us.' " |
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| Meanwhile, Douglas continues "to
photograph
graves-and to ready his Web site. Inspired by his efforts, Australians
and New Zealanders have launched similar sites: volunteers
now take pictures of headstones from all Commonwealth
nations. Canadian Ralph McLean has single-handedly taken snaps from the
Prairies to North Africa. ("It's my way of giving back," he says.)
Douglas himself plans on sticking with the project until the end.
"Every time you hear from someone who has seen a photo you sent-that
keeps you going." |
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| Danson, in turn, lauds Douglas's
efforts. Some
of his closest wartime friends are buried in that Calais cemetery. And
he can foresee a day when schools will use the Maple Leaf Legacy site
to display the graves of yesterday's graduates to
today's youth. "To me," he says with a poignant pause, "it is like
walking into holy ground." Even tough guy Richard Janigan would be
pleased. M
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| 60 MACLEAN'S I OCTOBER 13, 2003
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