Author Matthew Walthert on the life of hockey star and Great War soldier Scotty Davidson
STORY BY ALEX BOWERS
For 90 years, the Canadian National Vimy Memorial has stood above the Douai Plain of northern France, its soaring towers a testament to 11,285 unfinished stories. Each Canadian name carved into the Seget limestone represented a Great War soldier killed with no known grave. All speak to a tomorrow that never arrived—of a future that never emerged from the mud and horror of the Western Front.
Even now, across that haunting white facade, everything that might have been continues to be laid bare: sons who never followed in their father’s footsteps; painters and performers who never realized the full measure of their talents; athletes who never learned how far they could truly go.
Of these, rising hockey star-turned-soldier Allan McLean (Scotty) Davidson was one. Though the Kingston, Ont., native didn’t participate in the April 9-12, 1917, Battle of Vimy Ridge—having fallen some two years before—he, like many others, is commemorated on the monument. His remarkable exploits, from the ice rinks of Ontario to the trenches stretching through no man’s land, have largely disappeared from public memory in the years and decades since his final fight.
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