ART HISTORY - When the sun sets over the British capital tomorrow night, an ambitious act of remembrance begins when the first name is projected against the walls of Canada House in Trafalgar Square. One after another, the names of each Canadian to fall in World War I will follow.
As the sun moves westward to Canada, the names will go with it, projected against buildings in six cities, including Toronto City Hall. The sequence continues with 9,700 names per night spread across 13-hour, sunset-to-sunrise vigils until the last name appears at the break of dawn on Nov. 11.
Three years in the making, Vigil: 1914-1918 is the brainchild of Canadian actor/director R.H. Thomson and his co-creator, lighting designer Martin Conboy, a labour of deep respect that has taken on a life of its own.
The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh, moved by the poignancy of the idea, now have confirmed their attendance at tomorrow's London launch. Public vigils are also to take place in Fredericton, Halifax, Regina and Edmonton, besides the National War Memorial in Ottawa.
As an aid to remembrance, a searchable website has been created – www.1914-1918.ca – to enable the families of Canada's war dead to mark the precise moment of their ancestor's turn in the passage of names, 90 years after the devastating war was brought to an end.
"This was the war that cost Europe its reputation as civilized. The war where Canadian families were forbidden from repatriating the bodies of their war dead, however much they wanted to," Thomson told the Star.
"So what we want to say to people is, `Watch. Watch these names move. This is the final march. The final roll.' "
For Thomson, it is personal. He lost seven great-uncles to war, including four of five brothers who fought with the Canadian Expeditionary Force under British and Allied command in WWI. That toll formed the basis for Thomson's 2001 solo show, The Lost Boys.
Growing up in the shadows of such loss, Thomson says he has always been mindful of the "unearthed stories in the attics of so many Canadian families."
Thomson knew his own stories: how two of the brothers fell in the battlefields of Europe and how two more made it home, only to die in a sanatorium from the effects of gas poisoning. And how the fifth brother – "Uncle Art"– wandered through a subsequent life of adventure, from Africa to Egypt to northern Ontario, occasionally showing up at Christmas to teach his great-nephew how to play poker.
For a span of three years, Thomson and his collaborator Conboy have been amassing stories from other Canadian families to better understand what Thomson calls "the enduring slipstream of war."
"As artists, we are trying to present Vigil as a piece of social history. To say directly to Canadian families that we understand that when there is war it doesn't just stop at a certain date. There is this turbulence that goes on for generations," said Thomson.
"I spoke to hundreds of families, hearing stories of men screaming in their beds in the middle of the night, still fighting the war for years after the fact.
"I spoke to a man in his 90s who broke down and cried to me on the phone – cried to a complete stranger– as he told of his father's war. Another man told me that every time his father swore, he spoke out his service number from the war."
Thomson recognizes that where art intersects with remembrance the terrain can sometimes be tricky. At tomorrow's ceremony in London, for example, the Queen will meet a number of Canadian veterans, including some recently returned from Afghanistan.
"What we are doing is not anti-war statement nor a pro-war statement. For me, I have no difficulty thinking about these things in dimension; one can look skeptically at military action as a means of diplomacy and at the same time have complete and total respect for the men and women who are actually there," he said.
"I'm doing this more as a Canadian, rather than as an artist," says Thomson.
"What really struck us in preparing for this is how many families hold the last pieces of this war in their memories. But the memory is fading as people near the ends of their lives.
"So what happens after that? What happens in that moment in our country's history when the memory fades forever? My response would be: mark it. Do something unique, so that you will always remember that moment when it evaporated."
