Canada 150

       

The Importance of Connections in Understanding History

       

       At the beginning of this project, I thought I had understood the Great War. I thought I had learned all I could about the terrors that war brought, and how it impacted virtually every family and every friend of the thousands of soldiers, nurses, volunteers and doctors involved. This knowledge, gleamed from 18 years of Remembrance Day Ceremonies, history classes and family history, seemed to me to paint a very realistic picture of what occurred during those fateful years of 1914 – 1918.

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       However, now, I can look back, and realize I had learned only a fraction of the real events of the war. Growing up, I was known as the ‘history buff’ of my friend group. I knew every fact from the war that had been included in the grade 10 textbook, the pictures, statistics, and battles. I used to sit in class and read it, to soak up the knowledge of what generations of people had done for us alive today.  However, these numbers and events, recounted decades later, only showed a jaded version of what actually happened. There was no personal element to what I knew, and thus no real connection to the events.

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       Discovering the life of Charles Herbert Collyer changed that forever. Julia and I worked so hard over the course of this project, digging through old archives on the Internet, flipping painstakingly through digitized volumes and diving into the bookshelves at Weldon Library to find every last detail that we possibly could about the Sargent’s tragically short life. Over time, we slowly began to paint a picture of who Charles was, beyond his role as a soldier in the war. We discovered his family and relations, his hometown, his profession, and used these to piece together our understanding of how these things could have led him to enlist for the sake of his country. Through studying a chronicling of his Regiment’s undertakings during the war that was written by one of the Commanding Officers, we could see exact dates and first-hand accounts of their everyday life in the a unit, from the months of training in Toronto at Exhibition Place, to their first few experiences of leave in London, to detailed descriptions of each battle they were involved in at the front in France. Combining this information with that of our understanding of Charles’ family, we were able to create our own interpretation of his character, to try and analyze his thoughts, feelings and impressions of each event as it occurred for him.

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       As we conducted our research, it quickly became evident that a universal theme in what we were creating was not just the actual events of World War I, and how a 24 year-old soldier would have experienced them, but the connections Charles made throughout his life and the legacy he left behind. Our focus soon shifted to demonstrating his influence on the lives of others, and how the death of one soldier out of thousands could have left such a lasting impact on so many people’s lives. Thus, it seemed logical that we should present our findings on a Facebook profile. Nowadays, there is no better way to quantitatively demonstrate a person’s relations than over the Internet on social media, where their number of friends and interactions are displayed to the world. Through this medium, we began to post little anecdotes and pictures of Charles’ life, and gradually moved on to posting first-person narrative journal entries of his experiences in the war. The profile began to resemble a complete recording of his life, and over the course of its creation, we began to view Charles not as a long-dead statistic from the First World War, but as the brave young man he truly was. Suddenly, as we were writing his history for him, 100 years after it occurred, we began to see the events through his eyes, and to think of Charles as more of a peer than a historic figure. To make him a Facebook page, so typical for the people of our generation, was to bring his memory back to life. It was as close as we could possibly relate to him in the present day and age, where we are so separated from any kind of the world conflict that was so commonplace for his generation. It was amazing to see our weeks of work come to light in the Facebook profile we created, and with each successive post detailing his everyday life, the relationship Julia and I had with our soldier developed from a simple research inquiry to a personal connection across hundreds of years. We began to feel as if we knew Charles himself, as though through us posting his pictures and statuses we were giving life to a heroic tale just waiting to be told.

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       This project truly helped both of us to become more personally acquainted to the true victors of WWI, the thousands of soldiers who partook in it. The work we have done on discovering Charles Collyer was by no means simple, but the process helped to show us that despite the century separating our lives from his, Charles was just like any other adventurous youth. He was prepared to do everything to protect those he loved, and deserves to be remembered through his legacy as a person and the love he shared with his friends and family. 

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       In the light of the current project on Canada 150, we felt it completely necessary to once again revisit Charles’ story, as it demonstrates one vital event in the Canadian Identity. The War in which we broke from our colonialist identity and created a new, organic and unique National Identity is a vital story to tell as we mark 150 years of growth and innovation, and as such, Sargent Collyer joins us again.