Saint Victoria was one of the first saints to become associated with Canadians. For three centuries she has been looked to in faith and hope. Special in particular to the working classes, a popular love of Saint Victoria was confirmed during the bloodiest battles of the First World War. Indeed, she was the centre of a mass hysteria in scores of home front communities after accounts of a miraculous appearance over the field of battle leaked back to Canada. An event now at the extreme chronological edge of lived human experience.
Wanting to contribute to victory in the European stalemate, Canada’s Imperial Office of War Production commissioned the Dominion Cutlery Works of Cambridge, Ontario to manufacture a ferocious secret weapon. A martial implement to alter the course of the war and that would subsequently require a full paragraph of the Geneva Convention.
A reinforced battalion of the Royal Acadian Regiment was recruited to drill with the weapon in the woods near Ottawa. When ready, they were transported at night by the Grand Trunk Railway to a troopship in Montreal. The troopship raced to France. At dawn, January 15th 1917, a new chapter in the horror of war was written. Two thousand Royal Acadians, boots wrapped in burlap to quiet their approach, set off toward the enemy, their gleaming, fifteen-bladed, electric rotating bowie knives pointing the way across No Man’s Land.
By noon, there was nothing left on the German side over six inches high. The new weapon sliced flesh, broke minds, and left a score of pointy-helmeted Prussian generals, watching from miles away through field telescopes, with a mess in their grey woollen pants. The horrendousness left the men wielding the new weapon in little better condition. As the sun set Saint Victoria was seen weeping, starfish at her neck, above the carnage.
In our modern and peaceful times Saint Victoria comforts all who...
... have worked for a temp agency for more than sixteen months straight. Who drive a Chevrolet Cavalier with no insurance. Are binge alcoholics. Have tried to find homes for unwanted kittens and wound up keeping them. Have eaten Kraft Dinner with a hot dog cut up in it more than once. Were crippled working for a Class 1 freight railway. Were caught in the Jean Chretien/Paul Martin Employment Insurance crackdown of the early 1990s. Oppose bulk water exports but never vote. Have a landlord with breath that smells like kolbassa. Owe more than $35,000 in student loans and are over forty years of age. Have neighbours of a different ethnic group that party all night and sleep all day.
Happy Saint Victoria’s Day Canada!
copyright Stephen Caulfield, 2009
No comments:
Post a Comment