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heart broke a little while reading Landscape of War and Memory: The Two World Wars in Canadian Literature and the Arts, 1977–2007 by Sherrill Grace, a professor at the University of British Columbia.
In this book, published by University of Alberta Press, Grace relates the story of the SS St. Louis, which attempted to dock in Halifax in 1939. The ship was carrying 903 German Jews fleeing the coming storm in Europe, but as no other nation welcomed them, Canada became their last hope.
The government, however, turned them away and the St. Louis returned to Europe and most of the people on that ship died in the Holocaust.
Then, in early 1942, before the fall of free France, Canada stalled operations to rescue thousands of Jewish orphans in France. The Nazis murdered those children. Canada’s Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King disliked Jews. He believed they would not assimilate to Canadian values and culture, and therefore threatened Canadian society.
When asked how many Jewish refugees Canada would shelter, King said, “None is too many.” By the end of the war, Canada had only accepted 5,000 Jewish refugees, the lowest number of any nation in the West.
I did not know this shameful chapter of Canada’s wartime history. Despite all the reading and research I’ve done over the years, I hadn’t found my way down this path. I was heartbroken as I always expect better of Canada; naively so, maybe, but I like to believe we do what is right. However, King’s response to Jewish refugees, the government’s willingness to strip Canadians of their rights and belongings and imprison them, the execution of Canadian soldiers by Canadian soldiers in the First World War are nothing to celebrate. These are not honourable stories, but there is no denying that they are Canadian stories.
In a Landscape of War and Memory, Grace argues we need to remember and share these stories for they challenge the official and often sanitized histories. They do this by incorporating memory. History represents an event, writes Grace, but it is reconstructed through memory.
Grace likens a landscape of memory to a comfortable landscape that is recognized and remembered and, as a result, meaningful. It’s where we remember the sacrifice and heroism of Canada’s veterans and the significant role Canada played in both world wars without glossing over, ignoring or hiding the shameful actions committed by the Canadian government, its military or even individual Canadians.
“What happens if there are blank expanses in the landscape or areas of the map without familiar signposts?” asks Grace. “What if the story is interrupted, erased, forgotten or buried? What if another story – one that is widely accepted, sanctioned, dominant, and official – already occupies the available space so that one’s memories and stories can find no room, location, grounding, or accepted place in the landscape? How then can the traveller find his or her way?
“The stories, memories, and the person who bears them will, quite simply, be silenced.”
A Landscape of Memory calls on us to remember the Jews Canada turned away, the execution of First World War soldiers and the Dresden firebombing, but also Dieppe, Ortona and Vimy without exaggeration or silence. It asks us to bear witness and to remember. Otherwise, we lose the true story.
We must ensure, she adds, that we “create landscapes of memory in which ugly facts and horrifying events exist beside more heroic and celebratory ones.”
Rather than tarnishing Canada’s reputation, and that of its veterans, a landscape of memory affirms that much of the truth is, in fact, honourable.
Based on her analysis of Canadian artworks (paintings, books, plays, poems, sculpture, documentaries) created between 1977 and 2007 that explore war in its different facets, Grace argues that artists – writers, musicians, poets, photographers, painters – are “uniquely positioned to bear witness to the wars and their repercussions.”
Artists, she writes, accept the “ethical responsibility to the historical past by bearing witness, by imagining characters who bear witness or who are secondary, second-generation witnesses, so we are asked to bear witness to history with empathy, accountability, and remembrance.”
Grace chose to start with 1977 as that is when Timothy Findley’s award-winning novel about the First World War, The Wars, was released. She chose 2007 as that is when the Canadian government celebrated the restoration of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial. She looked at a diverse body of work that explored both world wars and more recent conflicts, including Afghanistan.
“If Canadians hope to understand who and where they are in this century, then an honest debate about the past is essential. If the works of art about either war tell us anything, it is this: we must work at remembering so we can create – and continue to create – a landscape of memory that sustains us, that is as alive, as powerfully informing, and as ongoing as possible,” writes Grace.
“One can never undo the past, make reparations, or achieve redemption. One can only – but it is a lot – pay attention, listen honestly and, with empathic unsettlement, bear witness, and remember.”
A Landscape of War and Memory: The Two World Wars in Canadian Literature and the Arts, 1977–2007 by Sherrill Grace, published by the University of Alberta Press, is available for $49.95.
