Curing COVID

It Begins – The Great Lockdown of 2020

It was only supposed to last for two weeks…but it went on for two more, which stretched into two months…then all the way until the end of the year and on into the next.  As wave after wave of the virus washed over us, our children spent their entire waking days trapped in virtual isolation…confined to their bedrooms with only a screen to provide them with education, entertainment, communication and recreation.  As a father of two teenaged girls, I found that this was extremely concerning and felt that I needed to do something.  I had to find a way to free them of this imposed isolation and get them out into the fresh air.  The question was…how?

My first thoughts on a potential solution caused me to turn back to my own youth.  When we were young, my old man cured a case of the ‘mid-summer boredoms’ by tossing us into the auld woodie-wagon and driving us off into the countryside.  He taught us that nothing could open one’s mind and senses better than endless fields of corn accented by a healthy waft of freshly distributed cow manure.  Yet…it was not only the mid-summer boredom that I was most concerned about…it was the fact that all schools and most businesses had been closed for fear of further spreading the virus.  Everywhere we went we were told to wear masks and stay six feet apart from everyone else.  As the pandemic dragged on, I needed to find a solution.  Then…while I was out on one of those country drives it suddenly hit me…I knew the perfect place where every single person was going to be six feet away…the municipal cemetery. 

My solution would kill two birds with one stone.  Bird Number One: In my spare time I research and write individual biographies for dead soldiers.  My primary focus is the men from the 116th Ontario County Battalion from the Great War.  These biographies are published on Facebook and www.116thbattalioncef.com to a potential global market of billions (currently 407 members…and growing).  While I typically write about soldiers who fought and died overseas, many soldiers returned from the war as broken men and died soon after returning.  If I could find gravestones of these men, I could possibly use the pictures of their gravestones as media to accompany the biographies.  Bird Number Two: Help my girls escape from the four walls that acted as their covid isolation chamber. 

The first cemetery we visited was the Ashgrove Cemetery located just north of my house in Oakville.  It was here where I introduced my girls to the final resting spot of their great uncle, WW1 veteran John Edward Bell-Boddy.  He enlisted with the sister battalion of the 116th, the 182nd Overseas Battalion.  Once we took the obligatory photographs, we continued along until we stumbled into Greenwood Cemetery in Georgetown.  This was followed up by Fairview Cemetery in Acton and then we ended our tour at the Milton Evergreen Cemetery.  On these first visits, I would drive my car into the cemetery and complete a loop while my keen-eyed clan would try to spot the telltale tombstones. Veterans of the First World War were eligible to request a grave marker from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission that listed their name, rank and name of the Battalion in which they served. Once located, I would scamper out of the car and take a picture of the grave marker. 

We only made a handful of stops in the summer and fall of 2020, however as the pandemic wore on with a second then third wave washing over us, the feelings of isolation and despondency within my household grew.  I really, really needed to get the kids off their screens.  Thus, with the start of the new year family drives transitioned into a project with a defined objective.  My family and I would go to spend the spring, summer and fall of 2021 visiting as many cemeteries we could and documenting as many Great War Soldiers from the 116th Battalion as we could find. 

Every weekend, our travels would take us up and down the various highways and byways of the province.  We started with the nearby St Mary’s Pioneer Cemetery, Palermo Pioneer and St Jude’s Cemetery but quickly decided to branch out.  A trip to the cottage in the Kawarthas meant stops at St. Andrews Cemetery in Bolsover, the Stone Church cemetery in Beaverton and my favourite cemetery, Lakeview Cemetery in Kirkfield…however we did not forget to stop at all the cemeteries in the towns where boys of the 116th enlisted from…Cannington, Sunderland, Bolsover, Uxbridge, Zephyr.  We went up to Muskoka and ensured that we stop at St. Thomas Cemetery in Bracebridge, Torrance Cemetery and Port Carling Cemetery.  A visit to family in Pickering necessitated a stop at Erskine Cemetery, then onto Groveside Cemetery in Whitby followed up by a must see stop in Union Cemetery in Oshawa.  A weekend in Grand Bend suddenly saw me squeeze a stop at the local burying grounds sandwiched between games of mini golf and tanning sessions in the summer sun.

I admit that dragging teenaged girls to cemeteries may seen like an odd thing to do.  However, to my pleasant surprise the eldest just liked to get out of her room and listen to her music on her phone…no complaints, no distractions…a perfect outing.  For my youngest, it served as a wonderful bonding experience.  Instead of having the screens turn their brains into the consistency of porridge, we used these visits as a virtual classroom where I could explain how to identify a WW1 solider from a WW2, or what all the acronyms meant…CCRC to CASC to CMGC.  I taught her about the different ranks of soldiers and how the battalion was formed and whom it consisted of…like the many lads who only joined the 116th after first enlisting with the 126th, 169th, 157th or 173rd.  Our visits to the sprawling cemeteries, like Woodlawn Cemetery in Hamilton, St Andrews-St James Cemetery in Orillia or Springcreek Cemetery in Mississauga turned into both an educational opportunity along with a chance to spend some quality time together.  We even took a family vacation to Montreal where our road-trip included stops at the Cataraqui Cemetery in Kingston, Willowbank Cemetery in Ganonoque, the Last Post National Field of Honour in Beaconsfield and the glorious Mont Royal Cemetery in Montreal.  At the end of our trip, instead of pictures documenting the beauty of the old port in Montreal, our iPhones had hundreds of pictures of Great War soldier’s graves.

As we emerge from the confines of the pandemic, the tally from our visits thus far is 125 Cemeteries visited across the provinces of Ontario and Quebec.  We have taken thousands of pictures, found a handful of VCs (Victoria Cross recipients) and visited such illustrious leaders of Canadian Great War history like Sir Major General Arthur Currie, Minister of Militia and Defence Sir Sam Hughes and the Lieutenant Colonel of the 116th Battalion Samuel Simpson Sharpe. We have located and documented the final resting spots of 114 former members from the 116th Battalion.  Sounds impressive?  Not really…an estimated 4000 men served with the battalion during the war.  What does this mean?  It means we need to spend more time visiting our local cemeteries.  It means more time spent clearing leaves and removing the overgrown grass that obscure the name of the men and their battalions.  However, most importantly, it means a lot more time spent with my daughters driving up and down country roads, visiting new towns and trying to find as many obscure, out-of-the-way cemeteries as we can.  There is a hidden story behind each and every soldier’s grave…and we are enjoying making new stories of our own as we complete this rather unique project.