A Royal Roads University professor’s film about art and remembrance that was six years in the making will premiere, appropriately, just ahead of Remembrance Day.
Ways We Remember War, a 70-minute documentary written, directed and produced by Geoffrey Bird, a professor in RRU’s School of Communication and Culture, looks at Canada's first battle of the First World War and the art, memorials and pilgrimages through which it is remembered.
The clash — which occurred in the middle of the night at a place called Kitcheners' Wood — was in response to the first use of chlorine gas in warfare, and marked the beginning of the Second Battle of Ypres in Belgium. Some 6,000 members of a Canadian division of 18,000 were killed or wounded in that battle, and marked Canada’s first encounter with the German army in WWI.
No film was shot at that battle, Bird says, and there was a concern that photographs would not be chemically stable to last over time, so paintings were commissioned. As a result, Canada's memory of the battle has been shaped by art, memorials and pilgrimage to the battlefield itself, he says.
Bird, who is also the project lead for RRU’s War Heritage Research Initiative, worked with The Canadian Scottish Regiment, The Calgary Highlanders, residents of Flanders, historians, curators and landscape artists to make Ways We Remember War. A theme throughout the film is the resonance of the Flanders landscape itself but also at memorials such as The Brooding Soldier and Menin Gate.
“These are some of the most significant heritage sites Canada has in our cultural experience, our national experience, and yet they’re overseas, they’re in another country,” Bird says.
“When we think about art, memorials and pilgrimage, we’re working in the landscape of war, we’re working where the battle happened, where the missing remain,” he says. “These are things that I think really transform us when we visit these sites as they offer a powerful form of remembrance.”
The film also speaks about post-war pilgrimage, with special attention to the Kitcheners’ Wood visit in 2015 by the two regiments that perpetuate the memory of the battalions that fought there: The Calgary Highlanders and The Canadian Scottish Regiment.
Indeed, Bird says the film explores the power of place and the significance of Flanders in shaping Canadian war remembrance even more than a hundred years later.
At RRU, you can attend a screening of Ways We Remember War on Remembrance Day on the Grant Quarterdeck immediately following the 11 a.m. ceremony. You can also watch the documentary starting at 8:00 p.m. on November 11 on CHEK TV. It will be followed Bird’s documentary Abkhazi Garden: Sanctuary from War, which airs at 9:30 p.m.
Interested in telling stories using different media? Check out RRU’s Communication and Culture programs.