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Calling All Canadian Veterans' Descendants!

THE GREAT WAR - A unique television event.  In autumn, 2004, an advertisement will appear in newspapers and on television across Canada: 
Did your great grandfather take part in the Vimy Ridge campaign? 
Did your great grandmother heal his wounds?

WANTED: 300 descendants of First World War soldiers, airmen and nurses to participate in a remarkable television series. This nine-hour epic, to mark the 90th anniversary of the Great War, is documentary, drama, reality and history rolled into a ground-breaking television event. Like your great- grandfathers and grandmothers, you will answer the call, board a train with other descendants and travel to a battleground with the same conditions as 1914. You will be outfitted, trained and fed as a Canadian World War I soldier and be part of the re-enactment drama for the television series.

Those who answer the call will be mostly young, and in the dark about the Great War, as surely were their grandfathers answering the call in 1914. The volunteers of 2004 may have heard of Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele, but most will have no inkling of what a calamity this war was for Canada -- the transfixing pain of battlefield wounds, the unending trauma of those who survived, guilty that they too had not perished; the anguish suffered by mothers and fathers of the lost. 

The numbers are stunning. Canada was a nation of only seven million when war broke out, but suffered more dead that the US in Viet Nam when America was 230 million. In four ghastly years of war Canada somehow mobilized a military force of 600,000 -- sending 400,000 overseas. More than half were killed or wounded. This was scorching for the young nation. Most of an entire generation was lost. But, as Desmond Morris reflects: it was "Canada's war of independence."

THE GREAT WAR: Documentary
Thirty of the 300 volunteers will be chosen for a special mission. These descendants, representing a cross section of the country and various assignments of their great-grandparents during the war, will make a journey across the Atlantic on a ship. They will arrive at Southampton, the same as their grandfathers arrived 90 years before. They will be trucked to Salisbury Plain where their grandfathers trained. Here they will pitch tents and prepare. 
They will march through London to Whitehall. At this place, where the Imperial war cabinet made its fateful decisions, these grandchildren of Canadian warriors will be briefed on the war aims and upstairs drama by Margaret MacMillan, author of the acclaimed Paris 1919, Canadian historian and granddaughter of British Prime Minister Lloyd George. “No event, no war, “ she says, “is more searing and important to Canada than the First World War.”
This compact Canadian expeditionary force will then cross the English channel to the Port of Boulogne. They will be met by representative of the government of France, as their grandfathers were 90 years before. These Canadians will be ferried to Canada’s battlefields in France and Belgium, where they will camp and prepare to visit the haunted spots where their grandfathers fought and sometimes gave their lives. Officers from today’s Canadian army, also descendants of Great War warriors, will be on hand to describe how the battles unfolded.
The documentary scenes of this trip to England, France and Belgium will form the documentary spine on the television series.

THE GREAT WAR: Reality and Re-enactment
When the chosen 40 complete their journey to their grandfathers’ battlefields, they will return to Canada and join the rest of the 300 volunteers. All descendants will be outfitted, fed, trained and housed in authentic WW I era protocol. We will introduce our soldiers to the same trench environments that their great grandfathers faced. A huge site in rural Quebec will act as the setting where reenactments of the pivotal battles will be stage. Our participants will learn first hand the horrific sights, sounds and smells of trench warfare. They will be filmed as they struggle with mud and discipline, preparing for the big attacks. They will make sorties into no mans’ land to capture German prisoners. They will learn, as poet John Masefield remarked ironically, why the trench was the “long grave already dug.”
This two-week experience will be at the heart of the reality TV show and provide the battle re-enactments to illustrate both the documentary story and the dramatic spine of the series.

THE GREAT WAR: Drama
The saga of nine heroic Canadians will be given a grand dramatization -- and woven though each hour of the television series. Each of these major characters will come to life through their extraordinary letters, journals and memoirs. They will include:

Talbot Papineau: The protégé of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, some say he was the Pierre Trudeau of his time. From the front, he wrote letters defending Canadian participation in the war, debating his cousin, Henri Bourassa, the nationalist publisher of Le Devoir, who, like most French-speaking Canadians, denounced the war as an insane Imperial adventure. His letters go to the core of a great debate: Quebec was wrong about the Second World War. But was it right to oppose the First World War, especially in light of new research by Niall Ferguson contending that England started the war.

Will Bird, from Nova Scotia, heard the ancestral call of pipes and drums. He joined the legendary Royal Highland Regiment of Canada, The Black Watch. When Bird arrived at the front, his older brother Stephen was missing in action and believed dead. But one dawn, as Will Bird lay sleeping in a trench, he was suddenly awoken. It was his brother Stephen. Stephen told Will to follow him away from the trench. Will was conscious of his brother’s warm hands guiding him. His brother then disappeared as suddenly as he had materialized. Bewildered, Bird returned to his sleeping trench to find that minutes before it had been destroyed by a direct shell hit. Bird came to believe that the ghost of his brother had saved his life. 

The First World war is Canada’s Iliad, a great tragedy, a whirling story of chaos, death and destruction. It is an odyssey into war that saw the young nation almost bleed to death. But, like a character in a Greek epic, somehow Canada emerged from the blood and slaughter strong enough to seize control of her own destiny. 

THE GREAT WAR will be a television event filled with the power and epic quality of Lord of the Rings… but more so. Because it is true. Because it happened. Because it has never been told this way before in any country, by any filmmaker, by any broadcaster. 

If you are a descendant of a First World War soldier or nurse and would like to participate, or know anyone who would be interested, please contact Jennifer Bauer be email at j_enbauer@hotmail.com or by phone at 514-488-5178