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Stories of veteran service and sacrifice straight from the people driving today’s most important veterans causes and veterans organizations around the world. The show shines a spotlight on their inspiring projects making a real difference for veterans and their families, and along the way we'll hear the stories that drive them to do their best every day as they work to support veterans and their memory.
00:00:06:01 - 00:00:25:04
Speaker 1
Hey, it's Matthew Cudmore and welcome to Story Behind the Stone. Today we're joined by Alexandra McKinnon, historian with the Canadian Department of Defense Casualty Identification Program. Join us as we talk about the ongoing search for Canada's missing war dead, the role of DNA in historical research, and the personal stories that echo across generations.
00:00:25:06 - 00:00:29:19
Speaker 1
Alexandra, thanks for joining us on the show and to our listeners. Thanks for tuning in.
00:00:35:20 - 00:00:53:21
Speaker 1
Welcome to the story behind the Stone, where we talk service, sacrifice, and stories connecting you to the past and the most interesting people in the field of veteran causes and commemoration. My name is Ryan Mullens along with Matthew Cudmore. We are with Memory Anchor, a company committed to using technology for good as we change the way the world remembers.
00:00:53:22 - 00:01:03:05
Speaker 1
Today we are with Alexandra McKinnon, a historian with the Canadian Casualty Identification Program. Welcome to the show, Alexandra.
00:01:03:06 - 00:01:04:15
Speaker 2
Thank you so much for having me. A lot.
00:01:04:15 - 00:01:05:22
Speaker 1
To talk about, but how did you get.
00:01:05:22 - 00:01:30:04
Speaker 2
Started? Really fortunate to be able to say that my job title is historian, which is a pretty special thing. And I'm fortunate in one sense in that I always I've always known what I wanted to do. I've always loved history, but at the same time, I couldn't have predicted the path that would bring me here. And part of that is that I sometimes say I grew up doing a tour of the Commonwealth, so I'm half Australian, half Canadian, and I grew up in Canada, in Australia and India and Sri Lanka.
00:01:30:06 - 00:01:50:19
Speaker 2
And as a historian, that interest in transnational histories is really embedded in my work. And as we'll discuss later, the casualty identification programs work. It's not just a Canadian story in a lot of ways, but I came into military history specifically because I was really interested in understanding my own family history better, because I realized that it had been shaped by the First World War in a lot of ways.
00:01:50:20 - 00:02:06:14
Speaker 2
Each of my grandparents had multiple family members, served in the First World War. Three out of the four of them lost an uncle. And these losses shapes the different parts of my family in different ways, but echoed across generations, including in part of the family coming to Canada in the first place. So on my dad's side, this story was well known.
00:02:06:14 - 00:02:28:07
Speaker 2
I mean, my great grandmother was still around when I was a kid, and her favorite brother had been killed at 62. So in June 1916, with the alive. But on my mum's side, on the Australian side, there was really just knowledge that something had gone wrong, but the specific stories had been lost. And now in the now, in the 21st century, records are accessible in a way that they simply weren't for a long time.
00:02:28:07 - 00:02:43:23
Speaker 2
And so I could start to trace these stories. What that meant as I went on to study history and material culture at university and like my colleague Renee Davis, who I believe has already been on the show, I wound up working at the Canadian National Day Memorial in northern France as part of Veterans Affairs That Student Guide in France program.
00:02:43:23 - 00:03:08:18
Speaker 2
From there, I worked in education at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. While working on my thesis, which looked at the impact of conflict on Bri families and their role in shaping cultural memory of the Great War. I finished up my thesis in 2020, and I was working in a museum in 2020. And as a result, as much as I loved history, when the world shut down, I didn't want to be naive about the prospects of a career in academia.
00:03:08:20 - 00:03:30:08
Speaker 2
And I realized who's really interested in different opportunities to engage with the impact of conflict and peacebuilding. I found a lot of resonance in the work that I was doing on a conflict that had ended a century ago, with the impact of much more recent conflicts. My family, my parents were living in Sri Lanka, where they're dealing with the impact of 50 years of sectarian violence, including a 26 year civil war.
00:03:30:08 - 00:03:47:00
Speaker 2
And all of that is to say, I actually went there going to law school. So rather than a PhD in history, I have a JD, and a lot of that was about my interest in applying these lessons of the past towards the present. But life has a way of surprising you. And on my very last day of last night, I got offered a permanent full time job as a historian.
00:03:47:05 - 00:03:54:11
Speaker 2
So it's a way to balance these different interests that that range of experience. What up being helpful time and time again in this job.
00:03:54:11 - 00:04:02:14
Speaker 1
You are now with the Department of Defense Casualty Identification Program. What does your day to day look like and what is the program trying to accomplish?
00:04:02:15 - 00:04:19:08
Speaker 2
The ultimate purpose of the Casualty Identification program is for the missing to be buried with their name, by their unit and in the presence of their family. So the Casualty Identification Program is part of the Directorate of History and Heritage at the Department of National Defense, the Directorate of History and Heritage, or DHHS, as we all call it.
00:04:19:08 - 00:04:49:15
Speaker 2
It's mandated to preserve and communicate Canada's military history and to foster pride in our military heritage so that it's everything from if any cast members are listening to this, to the dress manual and the drill manual, it's music managing the I think it's 73 Canadian military museums across Canada. There are the official histories being published of, Canadians of Canadian service and complex and peacekeeping operations, and we the casualty identification program, that is to say, we're part of, we're part of the heritage section.
00:04:49:15 - 00:05:06:08
Speaker 2
And the casualty identification program works to identify the remains of the more than 27,000 war dead who died while serving with Canadian forces and who remain missing from the world wars and Korea, the majority of these missing. So more than 19,000, lost their lives in the First World War. So we have what we refer to as remains cases.
00:05:06:08 - 00:05:24:08
Speaker 2
So when human remains are uncovered, incidentally, say, basically any time a farmer in northern France does anything, they tend to find things from the First World War. And so through farming or road work, sometimes human remains are found and these are generally skeletal human remains. But we work to identify those. And the other type of case are what we refer to as a graves case.
00:05:24:08 - 00:05:45:05
Speaker 2
So when someone has already been buried is an unknown soldier in a cemetery maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and we receive a proposal from an external researcher that they believe, based on historical information, that we can identify them when somebody has been laid to rest in a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery, it's a little different to the American identification process because, they cannot be exempt.
00:05:45:10 - 00:06:06:08
Speaker 2
And as a result, our identification processes for graves cases and remains cases are quite different. Because graves cases are totally limited to historical research. This is where the public facing side of things starts to come in in a few different contexts, because for remains cases, when remains are recovered, we use both historical research and forensic anthropology to help develop this shortlist of candidates.
00:06:06:08 - 00:06:30:01
Speaker 2
Sometimes someone will be found with unique identifiers, such as a badge, or with personal items that help us narrow list of candidates. I mean, you really hope somebody is wearing a signet ring or something like that with their initials or has the remnants of an identification desk. But in many cases, you have that general historical research helping narrow down what units were in the area where they would have been in relation to the recovery location, what information we have surrounding individual deaths.
00:06:30:01 - 00:06:50:02
Speaker 2
And once we start building that list, which which can be quite long, we also look at what the remains themselves can tell us. So forensic anthropology helps us establish, general anthropological information, such as their approximate age or height. And for a long time, if this were to give you a list of 50 or 5 or two candidates, this is where that story would end.
00:06:50:02 - 00:07:08:11
Speaker 2
That person would still have to be laid to rest as an unknown soldier. Today, however, we can also use DNA in the identification process. And this is what a large part of my day involves, tracking down family members, who meet the criteria for DNA comparison and essentially calling them up and saying, excuse me, you heard of the First World War?
00:07:08:13 - 00:07:13:12
Speaker 2
This is the Canadian government telling, hey, could you please give us some special.
00:07:13:14 - 00:07:16:12
Speaker 1
How often do you get hung up on.
00:07:16:14 - 00:07:36:03
Speaker 2
Nice little. But I don't start with the, This is a government calling. Could we please have some specify? We've, I would say polish the outreach a little bit more. And in relation to that, given we have no DNA on file from the world wars, there are a few types of DNA that we can use if we have the right family member available to give us a sample.
00:07:36:03 - 00:08:03:02
Speaker 2
So one type, for example, is called wise str DNA, which is passed through the Y chromosome. So from father to son. And then there's also MT DNA like teeth not empty or also called mitochondrial DNA which is passed from mothers of their children. So we're looking for family members who meet very specific criteria. A lot of my work involves finding family members for various reasons, either looking for DNA donor or in the event that we have a successful graves identification case.
00:08:03:02 - 00:08:09:10
Speaker 2
I'm also responsible for finding the next of kin in that instance. So finding the oldest living relative from the closest living generation.
00:08:09:11 - 00:08:20:06
Speaker 1
It's not as simple as just getting a DNA sample. And of course, it sounds like you have to go through a large process before you get to the point of even going. We're at the place to do DNA.
00:08:20:08 - 00:08:43:18
Speaker 2
For so many of these cases. Sometimes the candidate lists will just simply be insurmountable. With the technology, the information that we have available, something like the first Death War, a lot of records have been lost, particularly in terms of the exact circumstances of death. Sometimes the determination made after historical investigation is just going to be simply, we can't start looking for DNA donors is the list of candidates is a thousand people or something like that?
00:08:43:18 - 00:09:07:01
Speaker 2
There are two important parts. The candidate list. As I mentioned, there's a historical research who's missing from that area, but there's also the forensic anthropology. So what the remains themselves can tell us. So approximate age, approximate height. We always hope that if we're looking at a case that the that these remains will turn out to belong to somebody who's either old by the standards of the First World War or young or tall or short.
00:09:07:03 - 00:09:29:03
Speaker 2
So, for example, at the recent identification of Lieutenant Francis Henry Hemsley, Lieutenant Hemsley was over six foot tall and he was 37 years old, both of which are really helpful in terms of narrowing that candidate list. Another recent identification, Sergeant Richard Musgrove is 32, was 32 years old and he was five foot three. So again, very helpful is that those are the kind of statistics you want.
00:09:29:03 - 00:09:52:04
Speaker 2
But the vast majority of the guys I'm looking for are about five, five and in their early 20s, which, doesn't really narrow things down. But our starting point for any of this research, we're looking at an attestation file. Since part of the enlistment process, recruits provide basic biographical information, including name, date and place of birth, occupation, religious denomination, and information regarding their next of kin.
00:09:52:07 - 00:10:11:09
Speaker 2
All these details have a part to play in tracing somebody's life and the lives of their families over the past century. But when we're starting with these files, sometimes this is easy, so you can match a name and birth date to a birth to an official birth record. Or we can find a family and census records. And in a thousand small ways, we can start to build out a soldier's family.
00:10:11:09 - 00:10:30:11
Speaker 2
There's some other sources that we, that we can use in our work as we start to build out a family tree, everything from newspaper records to, as I said, census information, just, really anything that we might be able to find. We normally use genealogy genealogy websites like Ancestry.com to start to build these trees and save sources.
00:10:30:13 - 00:10:59:04
Speaker 2
And if we're lucky, we may then find that another users, a close relative of the person that we're researching. It doesn't happen often, but it always makes my life a lot easier when you can just send somebody a message. If we are exceptionally lucky, a preliminary Google search will will reveal that a local library is digitizing an extensive family history which which happened once, or that a relative is posted about the candidate on social media for Remembrance Day, which which happens more often than you might think for DNA, we're not just we're not looking for the closest relative.
00:10:59:04 - 00:11:17:08
Speaker 2
We're looking for family members who meet specific criteria. And sometimes a viable DNA donor is not going to be the closest relative. But from here, once we've, once we've started that initial, that initial search, looking at the soldier and their immediate family, you can start we can start to look for more recent records and starting to build out a family tree.
00:11:17:08 - 00:11:35:23
Speaker 2
We can identify living DNA donor who meets the requirements for the form of DNA that we're searching for. And that includes everything from obituaries to sometimes have to look somebody up on social media to see if you can figure out what province they might be living in. See if you can find a phone number and email or something.
00:11:36:01 - 00:11:59:20
Speaker 2
I, I emailed a Halifax cover band recently and they responded. Their bassist is a DNA donor. This all sounds really simple in retrospect, as I said, but not everyone has known and biological living relatives, not all living relatives are viable. The DNA donors and not all viable DNA donors want to be involved. So those are sort of three major challenges.
00:11:59:22 - 00:12:29:06
Speaker 2
If a soldier's adopted, for example, there's really not a lot to go on from that point. While attestation papers are a good starting point as well. We also can't assume that any of the information that the recruit is provided is reliable. People make themselves older or younger, they give themselves different birthplaces and they change their names. Record keeping isn't consistent across provinces, let alone abroad, and there are quite a few people enlisting from a listing who were born overseas, and we sometimes don't even have the correct country to start with.
00:12:29:06 - 00:12:53:06
Speaker 2
Private John Peter Jansen of the seventh Battalion, for example, he puts down that he's born on the 9th of November, 1892, in Kerry, Ireland, from census records. However, he was actually born in November 1980 1894, in New York City. His mum was born in Ireland and his dad is Danish, and for that his lonely. We're talking about three totally different sets of records, not including Canada.
00:12:53:09 - 00:13:13:16
Speaker 2
And another example, there's a man named Private William Crook, so both private gents and Private Crook are missing from Hill 70. If these names are familiar to you, please register your details with us. Because he gave his place of birth simply as Serbia come as well, it seems as if his original surname may have been more Siska based on a reference to a man we believe may have been his father.
00:13:13:16 - 00:13:33:13
Speaker 2
But his next of kin was a friend who lived in Sudbury. I've gone over every available street directory, census record across the period and unable to find anybody connected to that friend's surname in Sudbury, let alone to the address that he provided these guys on our candidate list. They're very human and clearly aren't thinking about posterity when they're filling out their attestation papers.
00:13:33:13 - 00:13:54:17
Speaker 2
I will also mention Canada is a massive, massive pain with vital statistics. So in Ontario, for example, birth records are not released until 104 years have passed. Well, it's 120 years in British Columbia. And so it means it's often very difficult to figure out if there might be any relatives living today. And we're working on gaining access to more recent records for our work.
00:13:54:17 - 00:14:13:00
Speaker 2
But at the moment we work with the hand we've been dealt. And weirdly, it's actually much easier when a soldier's family is in England or Wales. Those records are way easier to search. Irish records are incomplete. Multiple years of their census were destroyed. And so it's totally dependent on where where that soldier's family was from, where that soldier themselves came from.
00:14:13:00 - 00:14:34:14
Speaker 2
We've been collecting DNA samples for the Canadian war dead, missing from Korea. We have DNA samples for 14 out of the 16, which is excellent, but I think the holdout is going to be Private John Paul Keating. Because he was adopted, this was an unofficial adoption in Toronto, which means there are no records associated with his adoption, but also his birth record is not going to be released until 2034.
00:14:34:15 - 00:14:37:02
Speaker 2
So I have that on my calendar.
00:14:37:08 - 00:14:50:05
Speaker 1
You've done a lot of work recently. Is there any individuals that you've been working on? Did you want to share their story and who they are, and how you got to that place where you could identify them?
00:14:50:05 - 00:15:08:20
Speaker 2
I'll talk about Captain Wilson in just a moment that I would like to. Before that, just give a shout out to the, Canadian embassy over in Warsaw, because, one of the guys that I'm still looking for, DNA donor for served as George Psycho, but his name was Ajay Ghosh or Thomas Sacco, which I may or may not be pronouncing properly.
00:15:08:20 - 00:15:29:10
Speaker 2
I hope I'm pronouncing that properly, but he's among the missing from Hill 70, born in the Russian Empire into a family that was half Polish and half Ukrainian ruthenium and so very complicated to try and trace, crossing a lot of national, national boundaries. He had five brothers. Our hope is that sort of at least one of them has some living descendants who are viable tiny donors.
00:15:29:12 - 00:15:49:04
Speaker 2
So I mentioned Private Senko as well, because we're actually in touch with his granddaughter in Ukraine. So there's no viable DNA down or through that line, but it's clearly something that's still very impactful for the family. In fact, some of his descendants are fighting on the front lines in Ukraine at the moment. And we're also working on cases connected to everywhere from Japan to Denmark to the West Indies.
00:15:49:04 - 00:16:13:07
Speaker 2
And so what this means is that the work that we're doing, those connections that we're making, it's really beyond Canada as well in a lot of ways. And so, so much of the work that we do, there's connections that we're able to make. We owe a lot to local history organizations and other community organizations, for example. And I reached out to a local history society in Orkney in the far north of Scotland, the DNA donor that I was helping to find actually on the pub where the society had their meetings.
00:16:13:07 - 00:16:36:05
Speaker 2
So, I mean really where one part of this work. But we really we couldn't do this alone and I know, for example, when we have candidates with the matey ancestry, the genealogists in the Meeting Nation have been invaluable in helping us make those connections, particularly somebody like Private James, Robert Whitford, a metal soldier whose father, who was married three times to women, all named Mary, which terms of finding a mitochondrial DNA donor.
00:16:36:05 - 00:17:03:09
Speaker 2
So through the maternal line being out who was descended from which Mary was pretty crucial. And as well there organizations like Home Child Canada. So, the 28th of September is the British Home Child Day. And there are a lot of for a lot of the more than 100,000 sort of poor, or orphaned British children who were sent to Canada, as child migrants, tracing their lives is quite difficult and we wouldn't be and we wouldn't be able to do this work without their assistance.
00:17:03:11 - 00:17:20:12
Speaker 2
Part of why I'm mentioning this is one of our recent identifications was a graves case. A man named William Webster Wilson. For the past century, an unknown captain of the 16th Battalion has been buried at a British cemetery on the Somme. You can tell there are a lot of Canadians buried there because it is at an Access Canada spelled backwards.
00:17:20:12 - 00:17:40:07
Speaker 2
As I mentioned briefly, as I believe Rene went into more detail about during her podcast with graves cases. We're not actively setting out to find them. We just don't have the resources. We rely on submissions from external researchers who say, this is the information we put together. We believe we know who this is. In that case, the external researcher said, look, there's an unknown captain.
00:17:40:08 - 00:18:05:09
Speaker 2
The 16th Battalion, the Canadian Scottish buried at an British cemetery. There are three missing captains from the 16th Battalion. Only one of them's missing from the Somme. The issue was it couldn't be that missing, captain. The body was recovered from a totally different action to where that missing captain A died. The body was recovered alongside the remains of other men from the 16th Battalion, who, who died sort of several weeks after that.
00:18:05:09 - 00:18:28:10
Speaker 2
Missing captain. And as we were preparing a report that said, essentially, look, there are these unresolvable issues with this case, the court, since assisting with looking at the case, looked at the other missing captains on the farm and discovered honorary captain and paymaster, William Webster Wilson, who was officially part of the Peace Corps he'd signed up in 1914 to.
00:18:28:10 - 00:18:43:16
Speaker 2
Pretty much as soon as the war broke out, he traveled over to Val Coté, Quebec, to enlist because he worked for the Bank of Montreal. While he had extensive prior previous militia experience both in Scotland and Canada, he said, look, we need you on the Pay Corps. So that's what he was doing for a good chunk of the war.
00:18:43:16 - 00:19:05:09
Speaker 2
But as the casualties on the Somme mounted, as things got worse, he completed a machine gun training course and he joined the 16th Battalion in the field. But at the time he was killed in action, the transfer from the Paye Corps hadn't been completed as a result. He wasn't commemorated as a missing member of the 16th Battalion, discovering that there was in fact this man that we hoped had last been seen in the location whose date of death matched that location.
00:19:05:14 - 00:19:32:13
Speaker 2
But his casualty card had been destroyed. Basically, anyone whose surname starts with s onwards we don't have any information about the circumstances of their death as casualty cards are missing. But all this information started to add up and the question became, can we find anything that will confirm 100% on the circumstantial evidence, like the militia experience, beyond the circumstantial evidence, like the machine gun training course, is there anything that we can do that will confirm that he was in the field at the time he was killed missing?
00:19:32:13 - 00:19:53:19
Speaker 2
This is where Australia came in because Captain William Webster Wilson was born in Edinburgh in Scotland, so born in 1890, and he had a brother named Hugh. And so after William and his mother died, William moved to Canada. He took a job at the Bank of Montreal. He wound up in Lindsay, Ontario, but his dad and brother moved to Gilgandra, New South Wales.
00:19:53:19 - 00:20:23:22
Speaker 2
So in the middle of country Australia and at the point in time that William's reported missing his brother from Australia, writes the Australian Red cross wounded a missing girl and says can you tell me anything about what's happened to him and the Australian Red cross? One of the missing bureau, even though he's not Australian, even though he doesn't die serving with Australian forces, they tracked down a Canadian soldier who says he was on patrol in no man's land with the 16th Battalion when he was shot and the Australian Red cross did missing because it has digitized all those records so we could find pretty much as close to the smoking gun as you can get.
00:20:23:22 - 00:20:26:08
Speaker 2
That specifically says this is Captain Wilson.
00:20:26:08 - 00:20:29:20
Speaker 1
It's kind of serendipitous how a lot of these things seem to come together.
00:20:29:20 - 00:20:49:02
Speaker 2
Absolutely. And with Captain Wilson, I mean, it's absolutely one of those cases in terms of tracking down family. So in this instance, we're not looking for a DNA donor. He's the graves case. He's already been buried. He's been buried for the past century. But because it's a graves case, we were asked to identify the next of kin so that the unit could formally notify them that their relatives have been found.
00:20:49:02 - 00:21:10:18
Speaker 2
And as a result, my research took us from Scotland, where Captain Wilson was born, to Australia, where I found myself in the Facebook group for a small country town in New South Wales saying, look, I know this sounds strange. I'm a historian from the Canadian government. If anyone knows, Captain Wilson had a niece and nephew. Anyone happens to remember them as a 30 heads.
00:21:10:18 - 00:21:30:15
Speaker 2
If you send me a message at my work email. And unfortunately, neither of them had any living descendants that I heard from the nephews in laws who'd all grown up with very fond memories and that inherited the medals that inherited. And the memorial plaque, all of these things for Captain Wilson, they weren't the next of kin, because they weren't they weren't related to him, but they'd grown up hearing stories about him.
00:21:30:15 - 00:21:50:11
Speaker 2
But that meant then I had to take one step further back and go back to Captain Wilson's, go back to Captain Wilson's attestation paper, because he'd sort of, unusually, actually listed to next of kin. He put his dad. And then when his dad died during the war, his brother in Australia. But he'd also put his aunt, like his maternal aunts, in, in Scotland.
00:21:50:11 - 00:22:17:22
Speaker 2
And so I started tracing her descendants through a whole series of events. I wound up having to send an email to somebody, mergers and acquisitions firms saying, excuse me. And, you know, this is going to sound strange. I'm hoping to speak with one of your staff members about, about this distant relative that they never heard of. Fortunately, they read through it, they got back to me, and the unit was able to officially notify, notify that person's mum, who was the oldest living relative from the closest living generation that this cousin of hers had been found.
00:22:17:23 - 00:22:39:09
Speaker 2
And for them, even though they hadn't known of him in life, there was a really interesting coincidence. Captain wasn't. Mum's maiden name had been Webster, so her dad had been William Webster. And so Captain Wilson's family had a William Webster Wilson. And then the other side of the family, the descendant of this maternal aunt. They also had William Webster as a family name.
00:22:39:11 - 00:22:47:22
Speaker 2
So the third, William Webster on that side was still living. And so even though they'd never heard of Captain Wilson before, it was a name that they knew is really special.
00:22:47:22 - 00:23:09:11
Speaker 1
When there's an unknown grave individual, there's no exhuming, there's no taking DNA from that individual. So it's completely your research that has to identify that, though. When you see road work or buildings, shopping centers or farmers, and they unearth remains, those are the cases you get to take DNA from when.
00:23:09:11 - 00:23:33:14
Speaker 2
Remains are found. We can take DNA, we can do all of that. But yes, the moment somebody is buried in a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery, even if technology changes, even if it may lead to an identification in the future, while we can maintain any DNA profiles that have been generated, we just. We can't exhume somebody again. And it's one of the challenges with some of these graves cases, because we'll always have to on the side of caution with Captain Wilson.
00:23:33:14 - 00:24:04:08
Speaker 2
If we hadn't been able to find the kind of his death in no man's land, I'm not sure that we would have felt comfortable making that identification just because there too many what ifs. But it is really frustrating. There certainly at least a few cases. There's an unknown Capt to the 85th Battalion buried in Tyne Cot, for example, and there's only one missing captain from the 85th, and that seems very straightforward, except there's also a man who'd just been promoted, and it's not reflected in how he's commemorated, but he was he he was badges a captain in the same action and killed in the same action.
00:24:04:08 - 00:24:11:16
Speaker 2
And so I'd be willing to bet that it's one of them, but we just don't have enough information to say which one. And as a result, he's going to remain unknown.
00:24:11:16 - 00:24:15:18
Speaker 1
Really shows, just like how massive this conflict really was.
00:24:15:18 - 00:24:41:20
Speaker 2
So the and it's one of the complications with something like for example, we have a lot of cases connected to Hill 70. There's quite a lot of construction happening around the French tunnels. As a result, pretty much any time any that construction is involved, a lot of the ordnance clearing that takes place in advance of construction, which again, is a reminder of the scale of devastation, the First World War, because you have to have ordnance clearing before you can start building a hospital or whatever construction project they're working on.
00:24:41:22 - 00:24:50:02
Speaker 2
We're dealing with a lot of cases connected to Hill 70, but at the same time, there's 1300 Canadians missing from their odds of any individual identification are quite limited.
00:24:50:04 - 00:24:59:14
Speaker 1
Canadians know Vimy Ridge quite often, but they don't always know Hill 70, which was quite a battle. Did you want to maybe just give a little history?
00:24:59:16 - 00:25:15:14
Speaker 2
The capture of Hill 70. It's part of the advance across the do I plan that follows the capture of the me Ridge. So Vimy Ridge, as much as I think some of the Canadian narratives seem to think, oh, we captured enemy Ridge, and then the war comes to an end. Vimy Ridge is one part of the story. Once the ridge is captured, the German forces retreat across the do.
00:25:15:14 - 00:25:36:20
Speaker 2
I plan to offer to fortified positions and that advance continues now 70s. Interesting for the Canadian Corps for a few reasons. It's the first time the Canadian Corps is fighting together all four divisions under the command of Canadian officers. So it's under the command of General Arthur Curry. It was intended as a prelude to the to the capture of the French town of Lawrence, which was an important industrial area.
00:25:36:20 - 00:25:55:22
Speaker 2
From Vimy Ridge, you can see the pyramids actually, from the from the coal mining. And the intention was that the cannons would capture the French town of Lawrence. In order to do that, Canadian Commander Arthur Currie wanted to capture Hill 70, which was the high ground overlooking the town. And so the capture of Hill 70 takes place between the 15th and the 25th of August 1917.
00:25:55:22 - 00:26:19:16
Speaker 2
So a few months after Vimy, part of that movement forward. It's ultimately captured at the cost of 2200 Canadian dead, including 1300 Canadians who remain missing. But then the actual capture of logs doesn't wind up taking place because the Canadians are moved up north for their involvement in something called the third battlefields that are known as Passchendaele. It's a significant Canadian action in the sense it's under the command of a Canadian commander.
00:26:19:17 - 00:26:43:04
Speaker 2
Hill, 70, is captured, but at the same time, the capture of the town of Lawrence doesn't actually take place. And as a result, it's actually not one of the sites that had that battlefield artificial battlefield memorial placed there after the war that sometimes called the Forgotten Battle. There wasn't an official Canadian memorial there until the Hill 70 Memorial Project a few years ago fundraised for the installation of a memorial there.
00:26:43:06 - 00:26:46:01
Speaker 2
Although that's still not an official Government of Canada memorial site.
00:26:46:02 - 00:26:55:23
Speaker 1
Just while we're kind of geographically in the area, wanted to touch on how you're engaging in this really cool program with youth, I understand that you're over in France. This.
00:26:55:23 - 00:27:19:23
Speaker 2
Summer, historians from we get to go over to France to train the incoming students working at the Canadian National Memorial and the Bowmanville, Newfoundland Memorial. So Veterans Affairs Canada has had, kind of guide program in place for decades. At this point. It's gone through a few different iterations, a few different formats for the past 20 years or so, historians from the director of history and Heritage have helped train the train.
00:27:19:23 - 00:27:38:20
Speaker 2
The student guides, their guides come over three times a year from Canada. They're there for a four month work term. They work in both French and English as situating visitors on site at the Me. They take visitors through the preserved section of tunnels that's open to the public and through the trenches, telling visitors the story of the capture of Bembridge and its bomber mill at Newfoundland Memorial.
00:27:38:20 - 00:27:59:19
Speaker 2
They take visitors through the trenches there and talk about the 1st of July, particularly for the Newfoundlanders. It's an amazing program that's, really cool. One of the things that Veterans Affairs doesn't hire for is preexisting historical expertise. So they're looking for students who are willing to learn, but there's no expectation that they're coming into this with any knowledge of history whatsoever.
00:27:59:21 - 00:28:17:18
Speaker 2
And what this means is that when we come over as historians, we have about a week to go survey the different sites we want to take them to in the few days. And then on weekends, we just go visit different battlefields. But then we have four days to essentially explain the entirety of the First World War. Two university students, my colleague Renee Davis, and I were over there.
00:28:17:18 - 00:28:33:09
Speaker 2
It's the first time that both historians going over to train the guides have been former guides themselves, so it was great to be able to say, we've been in your shoes. We know how overwhelming this is. You know how probably sleep deprived or jetlagged you are. But this work is really important and we're so glad that we get to share it with you.
00:28:33:10 - 00:28:38:18
Speaker 1
It sounds like you're getting so much out of it yourself. What are the students taking away from it?
00:28:38:22 - 00:28:54:22
Speaker 2
One of the interesting things that we did was at the start, we just asked everyone, what's their connection to? These sites were, and a lot of them spoke about Vimy, or they said that they didn't really think that they had a connection, that this is something they were interested in, but they didn't know if they had a family story.
00:28:54:22 - 00:29:17:14
Speaker 2
They didn't know anything about that. And part of it's understanding why we're talking about these sites now, why 110 years later, there's a student guide program. They're coming over to visit these places. And certainly that's historical component. It's really important teaching them the history of these places, going year by year and helping explain the First World War. The other part of it is helping them develop their own connections, these spaces.
00:29:17:14 - 00:29:39:04
Speaker 2
But it's a chance to attempt to find your own connections, these stories, and not just the big narratives, but really sort of that individual experience and what it meant for the people actually serving at BME, people serving on the Somme. And so it meant we we were really grateful we were able to spend a bit of time in cemeteries with them, a bit of time visiting the moor, visiting some of the battlefields around these sites.
00:29:39:06 - 00:29:52:12
Speaker 2
So they're going to get to know Vimy and Beaumont really, really well for the next few months. But helping understand that this is one part of a much bigger story, and that they're part of that story as well. By having come to these sites and taking taking this role.
00:29:52:12 - 00:30:13:13
Speaker 1
I love this full circle that you've created in in your own experience, from being a guide to training guides. As we start wrapping down here, just from the beginning, as you're talking about your three uncles and you doing that research yourself, can you tell me, have you been able to get to their graves overseas and what was that experience like for you?
00:30:13:17 - 00:30:34:15
Speaker 2
I visited some of the battlefields of the Western Front with my grandmother on. His uncle had been killed while serving the BBC. Allied health, 62. But my sister and I refer to as the world's most depressing family vacation to Europe. But I remember having this image of a cemetery that went on forever. And I realized in retrospect, that's because it was lessened to where there are more than 10,000 war dead buried there.
00:30:34:15 - 00:31:01:02
Speaker 2
So he died of wounds received at hell 62. But on my mum's side, one great uncle was killed, on the 29th of September, 1918. So during the break in the Hindenburg Line, I was able to visit that site with my mum when I was working at Vimy. So she stopped by for a few days and we drove down to the Somme, down to this tiny little cemetery in the village and as far as we can tell, were the first members of the family to have ever been there.
00:31:01:03 - 00:31:21:02
Speaker 2
And that was something really special, like a guy from the guy from Tasmania. So literally the opposite side of the world. The other great uncle of my mum's who'd been killed, he dies at Gallipoli, so he dies serving with Australian forces, dies during the landings at Gallipoli. And I helped take a group of Australian undergrads to visit the battlefields when I, when I was doing my masters.
00:31:21:04 - 00:31:41:22
Speaker 2
And as far as we can tell, that trip to Gallipoli, where's name is on the Lone Pine Memorial. So it's among the missing again. It's the first time a member of my family had been there since the 25th of April, 1915, when he was killed during the landings. And being able to go there a little bit later with that, with my mum and with my sister, I want to share that story, was really, really special.
00:31:42:00 - 00:32:05:15
Speaker 2
But it's a strange feeling, seeing seeing names on a headstone. And it's one of the things that I think is so interesting about this work that we do, and that's why I'm so grateful that I get to work with members of the public, because these losses echo across generations in totally different ways. In the work that we've been doing, I've met families whose parents or grandparents refused to speak the war and others where they were named for this lost loved one.
00:32:05:15 - 00:32:25:23
Speaker 2
And families were both of those things are true at once. I've spoken to a 91 year old man in New Zealand about his uncle. I've listened to a recording, The Soldier's Brother, who was the bandmaster at the Savoy Hotel in London at the height of the Roaring 20s. It's a really special connection, being able to help families find those connections, even if at the end of the day, we're not able to make an identification.
00:32:26:01 - 00:32:31:19
Speaker 2
Every DNA test, every connection that we make, it puts us one step closer towards identifying these guys, whatever that outcome.
00:32:31:23 - 00:32:53:14
Speaker 1
I think that summarizes the spirit of what you're doing is the word connection. You're connecting information to people and people, to history and families, to their own history. And the memories of these individuals, to the general public. And it's amazing work. It's important work. So on that note, if people want to connect to you, connect to some of these individuals.
00:32:53:14 - 00:32:57:21
Speaker 1
There's a call out for information, as you mentioned, where do people go to learn more.
00:32:57:21 - 00:33:16:15
Speaker 2
For anyone, anyone listening to this who has a missing family member who died with Canadian Forces, even if it's a distant connection, you would love to hear from you. So on the casualty identification programs websites, if you Google casualty Identification program or casualty identification Program Canada, we have a form on there for family members to register their details.
00:33:16:15 - 00:33:36:13
Speaker 2
What this means is that if your loved one appears as a candidate in a case, we can use the registry to get in touch with you. Instead of my needing to track you down. Multiple DNA donors have been identified through the form, which is fantastic given those restrictions on vital statistics information in Canada, our best method of finding family members is often other family members.
00:33:36:15 - 00:33:55:02
Speaker 2
So even if you're not a viable DNA donor, you may be able to help us, or provide us with information that will lead us to one. The other thing is that we are now doing monthly social media posts on the Canadian Armed Forces social media. So every month we're profiling a few candidates missing from cases. A lot of them are 70, but not all of them.
00:33:55:02 - 00:34:01:00
Speaker 2
We would love to connect with the families of those men, but also just more generally. We'd love to hear from anyone.
00:34:01:00 - 00:34:15:16
Speaker 1
Alexandra. We've so enjoyed chatting with you today. To learn a little bit more about how you got started, how your day to day looks, your outreach and engagement with families. And I think we all know when we get a call from the government asking for a file list, but that it might actually be a legitimate question.
00:34:15:17 - 00:34:19:10
Speaker 2
Anyone listening to this, please tell your friends so that they don't think we're a scam.
00:34:19:13 - 00:34:26:14
Speaker 1
It's been an absolute pleasure. So thank you again for for coming on and doing the work that you're doing for for Canadians and their families. Thank you.
00:34:32:06 - 00:34:51:16
Speaker 1
Thanks so much for tuning in. Story. Behind the Stone is available on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on the Rise Across America Radio Network on iHeartRadio. Audacity and tune in to search for wreath. We air every Thursday at 10 a.m. eastern on the Red Cross Radio Network. Thank you for tuning in.