Nova Scotia author's new book honours Canada's war dead through graves and stories

HALIFAX · Nova Scotia author and photographer Len Wagg has released a new book documenting the final resting places of Canadian soldiers and the people who honour them. "At Home and Beyond: Honouring Canada's War Dead" is the result of five years of travel across Canada and Europe. Wagg said the project was inspired by a visit to an Italian war cemetery 30 years ago, which showed him the deep connection these sites hold for families. "I got calls from Nova Scotia and from the United States," Wagg said in a recent interview at the Last Steps memorial in Halifax. "People had said they knew their father had died overseas but they didn't know where it was. And this picture of the headstone was the first time that they had seen where it was." The book includes images of well-known sites like Vimy Ridge and Juno Beach, as well as the grave of poet John McCrae.

Another 27,000 have no known graves. Wagg said he deliberately focused the book on people, not just monuments. It features chapters on Canadian war nurses and organizers behind newer memorials, and tells individual soldiers' stories. One profile is of Sarah Lockyer and her team at the Department of National Defence's casualty identification unit in Ottawa. The group uses DNA analysis and other tools to identify Canadians from unmarked graves found in Europe, who are then given full military funerals in France. "One of the quotes from (Lockyer) was, 'They gave their lives for the country. It's the least we can do to give them back their names.' And that was something I found very powerful," said Wagg.

The book also highlights the story of Pte. George Lawrence Price of Port Williams, N.S., the last Commonwealth soldier to die in the First World War. He was killed by a German sniper at 10:58 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1918, two minutes before the armistice. By coincidence, his grave in Belgium is metres away from that of Pte. John Parr, a 17-year-old British soldier who was the first Commonwealth serviceman killed in that war.

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From a famous photo to a foreword

The book's foreword is written by Warren (Whitey) Bernard, the 91-year-old Tofino, B.C., resident who was the subject of the famous 1940 photo "Wait for Me Daddy." The image shows a young Bernard breaking away from his mother to reach for his father's hand as he marches off to war in New Westminster, B.C. Wagg said he wondered what happened to the boy in the photo and sought him out, calling their meeting a career high point. "I appreciated the way he was taking this on," Bernard said in an interview. "When guys like Len come along, they're not trying to get the story for a five-minute or a two-minute shot.… They're interested in the story. I was really impressed." Wagg noted the photo once hung in every school in British Columbia and has inspired a bronze statue, coins and a stamp.

Wagg said he observed a "generational gratitude" among younger people in Europe who maintain war graves and participate in ceremonies. "The reason why young people in their 30s and 40s are doing this is because of the stories they heard around the kitchen table from their parents and grandparents," he said. He believes part of Canadian identity stems from the "ripples" of sacrifice made in the World Wars. The book also includes the story of Alex DeCoteau, from the Red Pheasant Cree First Nation in Saskatchewan, who was Canada's first Indigenous police officer and an Olympian. He was killed by a sniper during the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917.

With files from The Canadian Press, Narcity and Toronto Star