Youth’s thousand-yard stare speaks
volumes in WW I documentary

Story by Stephen J. Thorne

For all the talk of the talking in director Peter Jackson’s First World War documentary They Shall Not Grow Old, it’s a scene in which those featured in the film don’t say anything that resonates perhaps more than any other.

It comes at the storyline’s transition from the war’s outbreak in 1914 and the enthusiastic queues of volunteers and recruits-in-training, rendered entirely in restored black-and-white, to the battlefront trenches of France, where the old footage emerges in full-colour, its detail and currency jarring to those who’ve only seen the time through the filters of scratched and faded monochrome.

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King George VI dies

King George VI, his health eroded in part from the stresses of the Second World War, died on Feb. 6, 1952. He served in both world wars and was the first British sovereign to have seen action in battle since William IV, whose coat was pierced by a bullet while he was observing the bombardment of Antwerp in 1813 from a church steeple.

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February 3, 1916

The Parliament Buildings in Ottawa are destroyed by fire.

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Ernie Verhulst (Part 2):
Growing up fast in occupied Holland

Story by Stephen J. Thorne

A wide-eyed boy when the occupation of the Netherlands started, Ernie Verhulst had witnessed widespread atrocities, death and destruction. By 1944, the sound of streams of Allied bombers passing overhead on their way to targets in Germany—Americans by day; British and Canadians by night—had become so commonplace he rarely bothered to look up anymore.

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Invisible injury

Story by Sharon Adams

If a soldier’s moral conscience is damaged, the problem and the solution can both be hard to find. For almost a decade, Canadian Armed Forces reservist James (not his real name) has been haunted by memories from one of his three tours to Afghanistan—haunted by something he did not do. The unextinguished feelings are a hint of a different kind of injury, one as old as armed conflict.

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A Mountie is killed by the Mad Trapper

On Jan. 30, 1932, Albert Johnson, known as the Mad Trapper of Rat River, sealed his fate by killing RCMP Constable Edgar Millen.

Surly and unfriendly, Johnson built a cabin in the summer of 1931 at prime trapping grounds along the Rat River in the Northwest Territories—but he never got a licence to trap.

When trapping season started, members of the Loucheux First Nation found someone interfering with their traps—and the only new person on the scene was Johnson. They complained to Millen at Fort McPherson, south of Inuvik.

Millen sent out two investigators, who trekked a week to Johnson’s cabin. Met with surly resistance, the constables went to Aklavik for reinforcements and a search warrant. When the expanded party of four reached the cabin again on Dec. 31, 1931, Const. Alfred King was severely wounded.

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Help is just a phone call away
The VAC Assistance Service can provide up to 20 sessions of counselling in a number of areas, including work-related issues, health concerns, family/marital problems, psychological difficulties and other problems in which the well-being of veterans, former RCMP members, their families and caregivers is affected. Bereavement services are also available.

You can reach the VAC Assistance Service by calling 1-800-268-7708. For the hearing impaired, dial 1-800-567-5803 (TDD).

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