Every year at this time my partner Mike and I recall the devastating losses our families have suffered from war. Remembrance Day is always a sad day when we honour the veterans of both world wars and other conflicts. Those memories have been compounded with more sad truths through the research we have been doing over the past few years. We are working on media projects concerning the two world wars and some of our discoveries have been shocking.
So many of us have been hurt by these wars as these violent conflicts affect generations. My great-grandfather John Chookamolin and grandfather James Kataquapit were both more or less kidnapped by a recruiter from the Canadian military who travelled by canoe to Attawapiskat in 1916. Nobody but fur traders and religious missionaries visited the James Bay coast back then. The area was completely cut off from the rest of the world. But 23 young men were taken from my home community by this recruiter, with promises of money for their service to the Kitchi-Okimaw (The King) and that they would be taken care of.
My great-grandfather Chookomolin contracted the Spanish Flu on the voyage by ship to England and died just outside of London. John Chookomolin was never heard from again. He left behind his wife Maggie and baby daughter Louise who became my grandmother. What happened to him remained a mystery until the 1980s, when a family member did some research and found out.
My grandfather Kataquapit managed to return, but his family never received the money that was promised. At the end of the war, he was simply dropped off at a rail stop near Kapuskasing and told to find his way home to James Bay.
Think of these young men leading quiet lives until they were suddenly thrust into military organizations, taught to fight and pushed onto the frontlines. Most of them found this new reality difficult and lived through horrible violence, death and destruction. Many were wounded while others lived with psychological scars known as “shell shock”.
I think most of us in the past thought shell shock meant that a person had been shocked by a large explosion. Today, we understand that “shell shock” is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a mental health condition caused by extremely stressful or terrifying events. War veterans are often severely traumatized for the rest of their lives.
In our research we discovered that many veterans suffered from addictions. Men were often supplied amphetamines so that they would not require as much sleep or food. These drugs also gave them the strength, stamina and ability to rush headlong into battle without fear. To calm the men down after a stressful period, they were given alcohol to wash away the horrors of war. The walking wounded developed addictions to opioids like morphine to ease their physical pains.
By the end of the war, these men were living with a combination of PTSD, drug withdrawal or addiction, alcoholism – with little or no help from the country they served. Some managed to cope while others couldn’t lead normal lives; many committed suicide.
In Mike’s family, his father James McGrath and uncle Patrick McGrath served in the Second World War. James was wounded in the Canadian-led Battle of the Scheldt in Belgium. During that same battle his brother Patrick was killed. Mike never knew his dad, who suffered from “shell shock”. He never recovered from the trauma of war and spent his life in and out of prison. In the late 1970s, James was killed by Ontario Provincial Police officers during a confrontation.
My Mohawk family came through Patty, Mike’s sister who married into the Bradley family. I grew close to the family and the patriarch, John Bradley Sr. He was a veteran of the D-Day landings in June 1944 and fought in the most terrible battles. He survived but when he returned to Canada he was not treated with the same dignity and honour that was given to non-Native veterans. Nonetheless, he fought against racism to rise up and enjoy a rewarding career while raising a wonderful family.
Chatting with my friend Paul Lemieux recently, I learned that his father, John F. Lemieux, was a mechanic for the Royal Canadian Air Force 406 Squadron during the Second World War. He had to deal with the loss of many young fighter pilot friends who never returned from their missions. It helped me realize that even those who didn’t see active combat still faced the horrors of war.
I pay tribute to all our veterans on Remembrance Day. The greatest remembrance for me is that war is not waged for the reasons we are told – our young people are used as expendable fodder to serve the interests of the wealthy and powerful.
This continues today in conflicts around the world, as in the Middle East and Ukraine. We owe it to veterans to question every conflict and work towards peaceful solutions. The war machine is brutal – a recent example are the efforts to discredit journalist David Pugliese of the Ottawa Citizen. He was accused of being a Russian spy by former Conservative Immigration Minister Chris Alexander. Journalists like Pugliese who question war face pushback by government and media corporations. If we do not allow journalists to be critical and question conflict, we are only served propaganda and that does not bode well for democracy.
I will honour the memory of our veterans by always questioning war and encouraging our governments to negotiate rather than kill and destroy.