Happy New Year. I hope that everyone has a safe and prosperous 2013 ahead of them.

At the start of the year, I like to look back at what has been done on the Canadian Great War Project site. Over the past year, we’ve seen a number of new people contributing, which is great to see, and also some that have drifted away, which is also expected.

If anyone wonders about the value that this site provides, I’d offer the following. In 2012, we had 175,000 people access the site which is pretty good for a site with such focused content. The peak visitors are in November, which is to be expected. What is pretty amazing though, is that the average number of pages viewed per visit is over 9. In the history of the site, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this number higher than 5, so this is an incredible improvement.

This is indeed a collaborative effort, in which I personally play a very small part. All of the above is due to the small, but dedicated, group of people that provide the content to the site. To all of you, I offer a huge “Thank You!”.

And I’d also like to provide a very big thank you to the very small group that toils in the background helping me administer the site. Without you, the site would grind to a halt very quickly.

The content of the site has grown quite a bit over the past year. We are still a long way from getting the 650,000 men and women who served entered, but we are making progress. We’ve also added a number of new transcriptions and photo’s as well.

Here is a summary of where we are:

We’ve had some innovative uses of the data from the site as well. Patrick Cain of Global News created “Grief's geography: Interactive map of Toronto's First World War dead” , based on the entries from this site.

There are a number of projects I’ve started and am getting closer to completion. One is the John Cushnie collection, a set of letters and personal diary entries that John wrote from 1916 to 1918. I hope to get this up on the site later today.

I also started to work on transcribing the 1931 government report “Reparations 1930-1931 Report - Maltreatment or Prisoners of War“. I’d like to get this completed this year. Many of the stories in this report are horrifying.

Finally, I started a long overdue overhaul of the site and navigation. This proved a bit more complicated than I originally though, but I hope to get it done early this year.

Again, thank you to everyone who contributes to this site. I get about 10 eMails a day concerning the site, and the vast majority express their appreciation for the content of the site, and this is due to the efforts that you have made.

Thanks, and Happy New Year

marc

Do a Google search on the phrase “We went up Vimy Ridge as Albertans and Nova Scotians. We came down as Canadians” and there are 9,500 hits returned. The comment is attributed to an anonymous veteran, but it is a strong sentiment, forever associated with being Canadian.

The battle of Vimy Ridge was fought on Easter Monday, April 9^th, 1917. It was part of the Battle of Arras, and it was the first time that all four Canadian Divisions fought together during the war. The objective of the Canadians was to capture the high ground, or escarpment, at the northwest end of the battle area. The area, known as Vimy Ridge, had been held by the Germans since October, 1914. The French had tried to take the ridge in May 1915. The British, in 1916 held the ground, and tried to disrupt the Germans using mining operations, but made no serious attempts to attack the German positions. The Canadians took over the area in October 1916.

In January, 1917, the commander of the 1^st Canadian Division attended, along with two other officers, a series of lectures hosted by the French, describing their experiences at Verdun. Currie, who later went on to command the Canadian Corps, came back with the belief that by using artillery more effectively, and by training the men using scale mockups of the battlefield they could take Vimy Ridge. On April 9, 1917 they did exactly that.

Vimy Ridge was the first major victory by the allies during the Great War. The men that fought knew that it was a great accomplishment, and it bonded them as “Canadians”. Many people will refer to Vimy Ridge as the defining moment in Canadian history; when Canada first came together as a nation. The victory was applauded in newspapers around the world. The commander of the Canadian Corps, Sir Julian Byng, received a promotion as a result, and later became the Governor-General of Canada, a very popular appointment at the time. Byng’s replacement as commander of the Canadian Corps was Arthur Currie, becoming the first Canadian to ever command a Canadian army. The impact that the Canadians had at Vimy, and through the rest of 1917 and 1918 hastened the end of the war, led to Prime Minister Borden having a seat at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, and had a direct impact on the Statute of Westminster in 1931. The cost was 3,598 men killed, 7,000 wounded at Vimy.

But that isn’t what I want to write about.

What I do want to write about was an article by Don Chapman in the Vancouver Observer. It was published on April 9, 2012; the 95^th anniversary of the start of the battle of Vimy Ridge.

Chapman is very misleading in his article. He uses Vimy Ridge as a headline to engage the reader, but his story has no direct ties to Vimy Ridge, or the Great War, or even soldiers who fought in the war. It appears that the timing was opportune, and Mr. Chapman took advantage of it. In many ways, this reminds me of sensationalist reporting.

Jackie Scott was born in England, out of wedlock to a Canadian soldier and a British woman who later became his wife. This was during the Second World War. Her father was a Canadian soldier, who fought for his country. There is no dispute that he was a Canadian citizen. What is morally reprehensible is that she was denied Canadian citizenship, despite having been born to a Canadian, living most of her life in Canada. She worked in Ontario, paid taxes and voted in elections. But she isn’t considered a Canadian because laws that covered children born out of wedlock stated that the child would be the legal product of the mother, with no rights to her father’s identity. When her mother married her father, the mother was granted Canadian citizenship, but that did not apply to children. Bill C-37 was passed in 2009 to correct this, but was made retroactive only to 1947, several years after Ms. Scott was born. This article does a great job of explaining the issue.

Mr. Chapman brings up the point that in the letter that Ms. Scott received from Citizenship and Immigration (CIC), it is stated that her father was a British subject, not a Canadian citizen because Canadian citizenship did not exist prior to 1947. He then extrapolates this to say that all the soldiers that died at Vimy Ridge were not Canadian. Until I read the article closely, that is the impression that I came away with.

Looking at the facts; Canadians, before 1947, were indeed British subjects. This has little to do with citizenship. That was the “benefit” we enjoyed as a Dominion in the British Commonwealth. So the men that went up Vimy Ridge were British subjects. In the immigration act of 1910, it stated that Canadian citizenship was granted to any British subject who was born in, or had domiciled in Canada for 3 years. In 1914, the Naturalization Act increased the residency requirement to 5 years. By the end of the Great War, there would have been few men or women who served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force who would not be considered Canadian. The person who wrote the letter to Ms. Scott should have understood the distinction between Citizen and Subject. Mistakes do happen, though, such as someone understating the casualties at Vimy Ridge by saying that there were 3,598 casualties, when in fact there were over 10,500. War casualties, and also by the standard definition, always include dead and wounded.

The statement concerning citizenship should not have been made, but it, like any reference to those that served their country (native or adopted) is not germane to the issue. Obviously using statements for their shock value works (Rush Limbaugh makes millions doing this) but it is blatantly wrong to imply a government position on the citizenship of soldiers from either World War based on this.

What is at issue is the fact that some laws, through the years, have been based on 19^th century premises. At that time, women had no rights. Obviously, this is not acceptable in today’s world and this should be rectified. I am quite unhappy that we feel that we need to use the anniversary of Vimy Ridge as a forum for human rights. Bill C-37 was supposed to deal with this, but was retroactive to 1947 only, so there are exceptions, some 250 according to “Reclaiming citizenship for Canadians — a Report on the loss of Canadian citizenship”. These were supposed to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

What I find most troubling, although admittedly I do not know all of the facts in this case, is that Ms. Scott is one of those 250, and has been denied citizenship because of circumstances that are not acceptable in today’s world. The case should be considered with the Canadian Bill of Rights in mind, and with the laws that are in place today. If a government agency is indeed making a decision based on women being considered chattel per pre-1947 law, then Canadians should react with moral outrage.

I’m sure that the intent of Mr. Chapman’s article was to raise awareness of the plight of Ms. Scott. And I would believe that he has been successful in this (else, why would I have written this post).

So, Mr. Chapman, I would come back to the words from that anonymous hero : “We went up Vimy Ridge as Albertans and Nova Scotians. We came down as Canadians”. From a moral perspective, and from a legal perspective, I don’t know of anyone who would dispute that. I’m reasonably certain that even Mr. Harper would concur. I’m not prepared to allow your interpretation of a single sentence by a single bureaucrat to denigrate the work done by Government agencies (Veteran's Affairs, Libraries and Archives Canada to name two) who help us preserve the memories of our Canadian military.

On the subject of Ms. Scott; this is just plain wrong. This needs to be rectified. This is a human rights issue, and this is what needs to be raised with the Harper Government.

I was checking my voicemail as I was walking out to my car last night, and found that my wife had called and left a message. “I have some really sad news. Remember Nick and Jennifer? Nick was killed today. They say it was a suicide bomber. This is really sad.”

I can’t claim to have known Nick personally. I may have met him once or twice. I knew him vicariously through conversations that we had at home. My wife, a photographer, would have photo sessions with the Rozanski’s on a regular basis; she started with their engagement, then their wedding, and now whenever Nick was home they would do family sessions with the girls. Occasionally when Nick was deployed Jenny would have some photos done so he could see his two girls growing up.

Of all of the clients that Penney has, the Rozanski’s were the ones that dominated conversations at home. This was Nick’s third deployment as a member of the Ohio National Guard; he had previously served in Kosovo and Iraq, and Penney was ecstatic when Nick came home from one of his deployments. She was outraged when she found out that he came home from one deployment to find that his peacetime job was no longer available to him. She was always laughing when she came home from a photo session with the family, with stories about how happy the family was, and how devoted Nick was to his girls. She expressed her fear when he was deployed. I heard about telephone conversations Penney would have with Jennifer, and Facebook updates that were posted. At least once a week, their names would pop up in conversations.

Jennifer had said that Nick’s posting to Afghanistan was to a relatively safe area. But in the military, there are no guarantees. The reports say that Nick was in a park in Maimanah, the capital of the Faryab province on April 4, 2012, when a suicide bomber rode up on a motorcycle and detonated a bomb he had strapped to his vest. Three US soldiers were killed: Sergeant First Class Shawn Hannon, Sergeant First Class Jeffrey J. Rieck, and Captain Nicholas Rozanski. All were from the Columbus, Ohio area, and all were serving with the 37^th Infantry Brigade of the Ohio National Guard. At least 10 others were also killed, including civilians and members of the Afghan police. The Taliban has claimed responsibility, and like many of these senseless attacks, the actual targets of the attack are unclear.

Last night Penney and I talked about war and soldiers, why young men have to die in a country 7,000 miles away, and why it had to be Nick. We know that soldiers fight because their country asks them to. They fight to preserve the liberties we enjoy. They fight so their children won’t have to. They fight to stop aggression. They fight to preserve peace. They volunteer to do a job that the majority won’t. But when we put the philosophy aside, we know that we cannot rationalize why Nick had to die.

Intellectually we understand that there are sacrifices made by those that serve in the Military, and their families, yet it only becomes “real” when it becomes personal. Nick was a good man. He loved being a soldier. He was a good husband and father. He will never experience the joy of seeing his daughters grow up. And Emma will have only vague recollections of her father, Anna will only have photos and the stories Jenny tells her. Jenny will have to cope with her grief while bringing up these two young girls. The sacrifices that military families make suddenly becomes very real to us, as civilians.

The story of these three men was the lead-in to every Columbus news broadcast last night, and the front page of the newspaper this morning. A week from now this will no longer be considered news and will have faded from our collective memory. It becomes convenient to forget.

Yet the families of these men will be left to cope as best they can, with the support from their friends and family. We pray that they will be able to find the strength to move on with their lives.

Nick was one of the almost 3,000 young men and women in the coalition forces who have lost their lives in Afghanistan. The memory of all of those that serve their country, in every conflict, must be kept alive. If we cannot do this, their sacrifices, and the liberties that we enjoy, have no meaning.

Sergeant First Class Shawn Hannon

Sergeant First Class Jeffrey J. Rieck

Captain Nicholas Rozanski

May you rest in peace.

We thank you for your service, and for your sacrifice.

We will always remember you.

Sometime over the Christmas break, Chris Wight let me know that the Black Watch/Royal Highlanders of Canada had published the Regimental History of the 73rd Battalion Royal Highlanders of Canada 1915-1917. We had known that the history existed, and we believed that it was in manuscript form in the Black Watch Archives. It was welcome news that it was finally published. The cost of printing small lots is now affordable, so the Royal Highlanders have decided to test the waters with a limited printing of 200 copies. I already have copies of Fetherstonhaugh’s History of the 13^th Battalion, and Topp’s history of the 42^nd, so this volume would round out my collection of Black Watch histories. Having grown up in the Montreal area, a lot of men that I research ended up with the Highlanders, so this was a welcome addition. The book is only available through the Black Watch web site, and this led to a set of very fortuitous circumstances.

After receiving the eMail from Chris, I immediately went to the Black Watch site to order it. Living in the States, it is difficult to get foreign money orders, so I wanted to pay for it via PayPal, which proved to be, shall we say, challenging. PayPal, apparently only works with certain browsers and versions and none of the ones I had (and running a web site, I have quite a few that I use to test with) would work. Besides, as my wife pointed out, the shipping costs to the States were a tad high, so she suggested that I get a relative to pick it up and send it to me. Somewhat petulant (“but then I’ll have to wait for them to mail it”) I conceded that it made sense. She also pointed out that we were going to be up in the area in another week, but we both knew that we seldom have time to drive into downtown Montreal on our annual whirlwind Christmas visit. I knew that my brother-in-law would readily agree to get it for me, but they were out of town and I figured I’d ask him once we got together over the weekend.

Our annual Christmas trek had been postponed until the week after new Years to accommodate the families various schedules, so Penney and I drove up from Columbus, Ohio to Ottawa the Wednesday after New Years. We spent two days with fiends there, and then headed down to Godmanchester, a small township about 50 km south-west of Montreal. It’s a bit out of the way, but we always stop in Pointe-Claire, in Montreal’s west island, to pick up some Montreal bagels to bring back with us (nothing compares to Montreal bagels). Penney also wanted to do a bit of shopping and on the drive down from Ottawa she suggested that I leave her to do the shopping, and then I could go into town and pick up the book. She called the Black Watch Armory (they say that they will open the Kit Shop by appointment) and was told that they would be happy to open it up for me. I dropped Penney off at a mall in Pointe Claire, drove downtown (it’s been years since I’ve driven in that area) and made my way down to the Armory on Bleury. Cal Kufta, the archivist at the Black Watch Regimental Museum, let me in and we proceeded to have a great chat for the next hour. Cal gave me some background on the book, explaining that it was the publishing costs that had prevented it from being published in 1944, that a very small “proofs” had been published and one was in the Regimental library, along with the original manuscript. With the declining printing costs, they had decided to publish it as it was originally written, but with an updated Nominal Roll. It turns out that Mike Cher had gone through all the Part II’s for the Battalion, and had compiled an updated nominal roll. Having gone through some of the Part II’s, and being very familiar with data extraction and transcription, I can only imagine the work that was involved.

The result is a great addition to any Great War reference library. The narrative gives an almost day-by-day account of the Battalion from its formation until it was broken up after the Battle of Vimy Ridge. The above mentioned Nominal roll makes it indispensible in its own right, and the notes on members of the Battalion after it was broken up were great reading.

All in all, one of the better Regimental histories. In a word (or 2), “Buy it”! You won’t be disappointed. It’s $24 well spent.

Cal also explained that if anyone is having trouble ordering it, either because of the PayPal issue or any other reason, use the form on the website to contact him, or call the Kit shop phone number, and he’ll be happy to help you. Absolutely 1^st class customer service!

I also picked up a Black Watch CD; one of my neighbours used to play Bagpipes with them, but that’s a story for another day.

It was supposed to be easy! I have known for a while that I would have to make some changes to the site to upgrade the infrastructure, because it was getting harder to maintain. I needed something that mirrored what I could test against.

So I did my research … really, I did. I tested the site on my local hardware against a similar set of hardware and didn’t have any problems. So I figured I was all ready to go. The process is automated on the site where the Canadian Great War Project is hosted, and it said “This process will take approximately 30 minutes. Larger sites may take longer.”

So I figured, well if it takes 4 times as long, then it’s only a couple of hours. So I set my alarm, and got out of bed at 3:00 AM, statistically the time with the least access, and started the upgrade.

… 2 hours later – site was still down.

… 4 hours later – same

… 12 hours later – I’m starting to get concerned

… 24 hours later – On the phone with tech support. Oops, the automated process stalled and left everything in limbo. “Don’t worry, we’ll straighten it out.”

So they reset things, and the site was back to its original state. Then a bit later today, they restarted the upgrade, and it worked smoothly. Except for that teeny little sentence, buried in the documentation “Applications may need to be modified after the upgrade.”

So the site came back on-line, and all kinds of error started to appear. There was a slight configuration difference between the old hardware and the new. Thankfully the error was easy to understand, and not too hard to fix … except that I had to change over 1,000 files and re-upload them to the server. My wife came in to ask me a question while I was desperately trying to get everything uploaded again. She quickly left saying “A leeeetttttlllllle bit stressed, are we?” Even Bodey Dawg took one look at me and scooted towards the other end of the room, sitting with his paws over his head!

But it all seems to be back running now.

Finally.

Some 40 hours after I started that “1/2 hour little task.”

I have a bit more checking to do, but I think I’ve got most everything running correctly. If anyone notices anything strange, please let me know.

This upgrade only affected the web pages that render the data, not the data itself, so nothing got lost … other than 40 hours.

Everyone has my sincerest apologies.

marc

The servers that host the Canadian Great War Project are going to be undergoing an upgrade sometime between Midnight and 5:00 AM US Eastern time on September 24. During this period, the Canadian Great War Project will be unavailable for a period of approximately 15 minutes.

We apologize for the inconvenience, but this is a necessary upgrade that our hosting company is implementing.

Sometimes fate gives us a chance to do things that we might otherwise miss.

A couple of weeks ago I was updating the cause of death for all the Nursing Sisters in the Canadian Great war Project. When I got to Henrietta Mellett, I noticed that the Cause of Death in Ed Wigneys Roll of Honour was listed as “Drowning”.

Henrietta Mellett was born in Galway, Ireland in 1883, and enlisted in London, Ontario in January, 1918. She appears on the 1911 Census, so she immigrated to Canada sometime prior to 1911.

As with any attempt to reconstruct events from over 90 years ago, there is some degree of speculation, but it is likely that her family had moved from Galway to Dublin and was living there in 1918. It is likely that Henrietta Mellett was returning to England on 10 October 1918 after visiting them. She was aboard the mailboat R.M.S. Leinster, with a crew of 77 and 694 passengers, bound for Holyhead, Wales  when it was attacked and sunk by the German submarine UB-123 just before 10:00 AM. The Leinster went down about 6 km outside of Dublin Bay. The official loss of life was 501 personnel, and it was possibly higher.

Fate came in to play when I saw that her body had been recovered and she was buried in Dublin. My wife and I were planning an Irish vacation, so last Tuesday, 3 weeks after looking up her cause of death, on a drizzly morning, I found myself in Mt. Jerome Cemetery in Dublin. I located her grave, as well as the grave of Private Fryday, the only other Canadian buried there. Nursing Sister Mellette is buried with her brother and sister, with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission marker atop the grave.

It is very satisfying to be able to be fortunate enough to have found that she was buried there, and to be able to make the trip to the Cemetery to honour her memory.

Perhaps you’ve noticed, but the link to the entries in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) database is no longer displayed at the bottom of the soldier display forms.

Sometime over the Labour Day Weekend, the CWGC updated their web site, and the result is that it is no longer possible for me to automatically generate a link to the CWGC pages. I’m not sure why CWGC made this change, but it is likely to cause problems for many people who have links to specific entries on  many different web sites.

I’ll continue to look at this, but in the interim you can go to the main CGWC search engine(link here) and search for the name yo are looking for.

Update 12 September.  It seems that the CWGC has seen the error of their ways, and the old link format is back working again, so it is once again available from the Canadian Great War Project.

If you haven’t already seen the notice, the Library and Archives Canada databases will be off line between 6:00 am and 12:00 pm (Eastern time) next Saturday (August 15th). Attestation papers and war diaries will not be available during this period.