O Canada

I inherited a bound set of The War Illustrated from my paternal grandparents. One hundred years after publication I'm exploring its pages to discover the people and their times.

"Signallers of the 1st Mounted Canadian Highlanders at their camp in England after their journey from Plymouth where they disembarked from their transports. The men are of the best physique th Empire can provide, solid specimens of hard muscles and iron sinew"

 

A Canadian bicycle battalion poses for the camera at Pond's Farm on Salisbury Plain where they would undertake training for their eventual journey into war.  I can find nothing about a 1st Mounted Canadian Highlanders and think they would be one of the many voluntary militia battalions who formed the 1st Canadian Division expeditionary force that landed in England in 1914.  The conditions in the Autumn of 1914 were of unpleasant cold and rain but as can be seen the War Illustrated has great confidence in their heritage of Scottish and Canadian genes and of course their nickname was the "Scotties".

 Here they are settling into a wet England with a shudder inducing open air water pump but the War Illustrated of the 31st October 1914 seems intrigued by the fatigue caps which would possibly be a more familiar sight in world war two when this Jaeger pattern from "Essentials for the Forces" was published in the 1940s.  

1940s Patterns to Knit from the Victoria and Albert Museum

   The Patricias shown on the left are one of the three regular infantry regiments in Canada who were originally raised in 1914 and arrived in France on 21st December 1914.  The Scottie cyclists would take a similar journey in 1915 and  the 1st Canadian Regiment would later suffer 50% a casualty rate at Ypres.  The nursing sisters of the Red Cross on the right would run rest homes and hospitals in England.

 

On the outbreak of war Canada had immediately offered 20,000 to 25,000 men of which this page pays tribute, however 630,000 would eventually serve on the 1914-18 battlefields.

Additional

"Canadian Command During the First World War" by Tim Cook - The Canadian Encyclopaedia

"Cyclist Battalion in the The Great War" forum - Canada At War

"Canadian Corps Cyclist Battalion" by John McKetny - Canadian Cycling Magazine (from which the photo below is taken)  

 

 

Snowy Mountains

 An entry for Sepia Saturday. "Using old images as prompts for new reflections".

These shoes aren't made for walking...

 Tyrrell Photographic Collection, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia

The "Start of the Girls Snowshoe Race, Kiandra".  Date unknown but taken by Charles Kerry who was the official photographer to the governor of New South Wales and a keen skier who captured many images of skiing and life around Kiandra from 1885 (when the first races for men and women took place) to 1905. However here we have the girls, the woman to the left looks older perhaps a teacher or an official. The girls look pretty relaxed I think the younger ones might have an advantage with the shorter skirts however the older girl (2nd left) has technology, a pole which was used for braking and turning.  My money is on the girl with no gloves and a bonnet, no encumbrances. Are you thinking those are not snowshoes but skis?  What's in a name, the Australians at this time called them snowshoes. 

Kiandra in the Snowy Mountains of SE Australia was the scene of the 1800s gold rush when the miners strapped planks to their boots forming a sort of Norwegian snow shoe and from this the Kiandra Snowshoe Club was formed in 1861 making it the oldest continuous ski club in the world.  Today it still exists as the Kiandra Pioneers Ski Club and celebrated its 150th anniversary last year.

But I don't want to disappoint with no pictures of the true snowshoe, and a climate more associated with them

 Photograph by Frederick W Waugh, Canadian Museum of Civilization

Canada.  An Inuit women wearing a hunting costume in 1921-22.  The snowshoes are made by the Innu (Naskapi).  The root of the word Naskapi means the "ones who live past the horizon".  Their home is Labrador and Northern Quebec.   The Arctic frontier, the all in one shoe a necessity.

Update: I originally thought this was a Naskapi (Innu) women but from Anthony, a blog commenter, learned that only the snowshoes are of that origin and the woman was in fact Inuit.  Fascinating that different styles of snowshoes are traded. Never having every worn a pair I do not know their advantage (or if it is just like wanting a different pair of shoes), but if I ever make it to the Canadian north I'll certainly give them a try. By coincidence I saw some indigenous equipment from the Inuit of Canada at  the British Museum in January, I'll be back down in London briefly later in the year so I will have to call in to satisfy my curiosity of the difference.        

Nunavik = Northern Quebec and Nunatsiavut = Northern Labrador.

The Outlander by Gil Adamson

"At nineteen Mary Boulton has just become a widow and her husbands killer" so says the blurb on the jacket of this book. The year is 1903 and Mary flees from the Alberta prairies towards the Rockie mountains pursued by her two avenging brothers-in-law. She runs, escaping with no plan or direction in mind. Her very survival in the wilderness is in question but at each point when either hunger or disaster threatens she is helped on her way by the people she meets. Things happen to Mary rather than her influencing them as we start out, but her story gradually filters through as she journeys and we realise that she has had little love and affection in her young life but in this escape she may have found both but her life is still in jeopardy.

This is a great adventure story with luminescent prose bringing both the wild country and the people that inhabited these regions vividly to life. A tough heroine who can battle winter weather, illness and injury but whose character unfolds and develops in this page turning book.

I think the quote from Ann Patchett sums this book up "The Outlander deserves to be read twice, first for the plot and the complex characters, which make this a page-turner of the highest order, and then a second time, slowly, to savor the marvel of Gil Adamson's writing. The novel is a true wonder"

This is Gil Adamson's first novel. I hope she writes more.

Verdict: Highly Recommended