Time has gotten the best of me lately. I am therefore two weeks late in posting this, but it is no less emotional.
I have been following Tod Maffin (https://www.instagram.com/todmaffin/)(https://bsky.app/profile/todmaffin.com) recently. Most recently due to the authoritarian coup that has overtaken the country of my birth. There are times when his sarcastic Canadian humor is a stark relief to the continuous barrage of assaults to sensibility that make up the news daily in what used to be united states. But today was different.
Today (April 9) Tod released a short, deeply moving, inspiring film depicting and describing the history around the Canadian taking of Vimy Ridge and the measure of pride it holds to the Canada. I would suggest you watch it, to understand my reaction.
About half way through this film, tears streaming down my cheeks, as the realization set in, that this was the battle my paternal grandfather survived. I went and retrieved the two medals and the symbolic hand-engraved bullet from the bureau drawer, and watched the film again while holding them. Over the course of this evening, my grandfathers life became real to me in a way that it will never leave me now.
I gained a deeper understanding of a grandfather I had never met, a man my father barely knew. The only remnants are these three physical things, and the brief understanding my father passed to me.
On the sides of the medals they read “805291 LH Sutton 38 Can. Inf.” The embellished bullet is hand-engraved.
My grandfather, who enlisted in the Canadian Army in January 1916, went to France as a wireless operator and expert. After the close of the war he became a wireless operator for Ontario I, plying between Cobourg, Ont. and Rochester, NY. He settled in Roch. after meeting my grandmother there, and had one son, my father. He became a radio builder for Stromberg-Carlson Telephone Manufacturing Company, before dying an early death of “black lung disease” when my father was only 6 yrs. old. My father, being so young only remembers being told that his father died from being gassed in the war. He survived the horrors of war and lived long enough to start a family. My father also, recounted that he only became a naturalized US citizen on his deathbed out of concern for his son (my father).
The rest of this side of my family are all still in the Eastern side of Canada, in areas around Millbrook, Ontario to Nova Scotia. I have never met them and therefore know no stories beyond the sparse facts stated here.
So to see such a moving rendition of this part of Canadian history, from a Canadian perspective, and to realize the bravery of my grandfather…just made his life, his service, and my Canadian ancestry very real. The rest of this day and into my dreams, I pictured nothing but him and his short heroic life. It is now a goal to visit Vimy Ridge, and it will be a yearly candle lit as I remember him.
