It is a significant year in Canadian history.
One hundred years have passed since the Great War of 1914 to 1918, but instead of fading away, efforts to commemorate and memorialize the global conflict seem to only be increasing.
This fall, the Wellington Museum and Archives is doing its part to heed the centennial with a new exhibit opening on Sept. 20.
The upcoming show, Death and the County Soldier, 1914 – 1918, builds on the museum’s award winning permanent collection, Far From Home: World War I, a major gallery installation that features a life-size trench and takes an in-depth look at the young soldiers and nurses who served in WWI.
Death and the County Solider picks up where that collection left off, exploring the aftermath of life in the trenches.
Museum curator Susan Dunlop says she wanted to focus on how death was dealt with in the Great War beyond the battlefield because not every solider ended up in the pristine European cemeteries people see today.
“We talked about life in the trench with the permanent exhibit, but this one is really about the experience of death and dying and grieving and coming to terms – for the families – coming to terms with that,” she says.
In today’s world, the loss of life during the Great War is virtually unfathomable. From 1914 to 1918 approximately 619,000 Canadians enlisted to serve, with close to 61,000 never returning home.
In major engagements such as the battle of Ypres in April of 1915, 6,000 troops were wiped out in a four-day period. In the Battle of the Somme, the Allies lost 60,000 troops in just one day. These numbers are both shocking and impossible to comprehend.
“World War I is all about the numbers,” says Dunlop. “It just goes on and on and on. It’s overwhelming.”
The exhibit looks not only to highlight the heavy casualties, but explore the far-reaching consequences beyond the trenches, particularly how they affected survivors – those who returned from the war, and the families the dead left behind.
“Many of [the soldiers] were gassed or wounded and so they came back and struggled for a few years and then died at home, often of lung diseases or tuberculosis,” Dunlop says.
Countless veterans also became debilitated by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which at the time was referred to as “shell shock” and generally misunderstood.
“A lot of them were seen as ‘faking it.’ They didn’t understand it, so it’s a double tragedy,” says Dunlop.
In particular, the exhibit will highlight Wellington County’s loss and subsequent reaction to death.
One individual featured is Alice Kook of Mount Forest, who served as a nurse in Toronto caring for wounded soldiers returning from the front. During the time of her ministrations, the outbreak of Spanish flu had made its way to Canada. Her eventual death from the illness is memorialized on the Mount Forest cenotaph, recognizing the sacrifice of her life to care for the injured.
Dunlop says one of the myths surrounding the Great War is that the majority of the men who died were young and single. In reality, the average age of a Canadian soldier was 25, meaning many left wives and children behind.
One of the ways the women at home expressed their grief was through “autograph” or “signature” quilts, a number of which will be on display.
“These [quilts] have hundreds of soldiers names on them, and they were made to fundraise for the war,” Dunlop explains. “The exhibit looks at how people dealt with their grief and honoured these names.”
Other artifacts of note include a horse drawn hearse from Palmerston and a number of silver crosses gifted from the government to mothers and widows of the dead.
As the Great War recedes further into the past, Dunlop says treatment and commemoration of the event is changing to make it more accessible to younger generations, particularly as there are no longer any living veterans to tell their stories.
“At the 50th anniversary in 1964 many of these veterans would still have been alive … so it was much more about they, themselves, meeting to honour their fallen comrades and now we’ve moved more into history,” she says.
“Because of online databases we have the most wonderful access to records, but we no longer have anyone who can say, ‘I was there.’ Records are one thing, but you never can know what these fellows went through.”
New technology has also been incorporated into the exhibit to make it more accessible for the smartphone generation. A number of the display panels have been embedded with Quick Response Codes that can be scanned by a phone or tablet and direct the viewer to additional information. Dunlop says this approach makes the individual part of the research process and allows them to apply history to personal experiences and interests.
“People are looking for extra layers of information. These days there’s a lot of, ‘how can I learn about my great uncle or my great grandfather in the war?’ and now we have answers for them,” she says.
“They can do the detective work themselves. It’s not just us in the museum telling a story the way we think it should be told … you can access all of this information and learn about it yourself and from your own experience.”
Also in honour of Remembrance Day, the museum will once again be placing markers on its front lawn on Nov. 5 to represent Wellington County’s fallen. Last year 310 of the placeholders dotted the grounds and this year the number will rise to 465 as those lost in World War II, the Korean War, and the War in Afghanistan are added.
“It is a very moving experience for us and it continues to be for people,” says Dunlop of their efforts to communicate the world of the Great War. “They continue to come back and bring people to see it.”
Death and the County Solider opens on Sept. 20 at the Wellington Museum and Archives and runs through March 29.
The museum, located on Wellington Road 18, is open year round Monday to Friday from 9:30am to 4:30pm, and 1 to 5pm on the weekend.
For more information call 519-846-0916.
