Performance at Darke Hall honours Canadian soldiers who fought at Vimy Ridge

A Darke Hall performance called Ridge uses music and soldiers’ letters to honour Vimy Ridge on its 109th anniversary. Jacob Carr has more.

A special performance with a mixture of spoken word and music, titled ‘Ridge, took place at Darke Hall on Wednesday and Thursday.

It was written and performed by Juno nominated folk group, The Fugitives.

According to group member Brendan McLeod, the thought behind the performance was for younger generations to understand the significance of World War I and the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

“My mom and I went to John McRae’s house; he is a soldier who wrote In Flanders Fields. And again, I was just struck by all of the situations in World War I, trench warfare, how inexplicable that was to me,” he said.

“So, that kind of opened the door to trying to really drill down on exactly what happened in World War I from the perspective of the soldiers and how different that is from my experience and what I can possibly do as a human to comprehend it better.”

Outside the theatre was a display of World War I artifacts put on by the Royal United Services Institute of Regina, with items sourced from the local Royal Canadian Legion Museum.

Kelsey Lonie, the executive director and chief historian of RUSI Regina, discussed how many teenagers from Saskatchewan gave their lives at Vimy Ridge.

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“These were just kids, kids from Saskatchewan, farmers, kids from the city. A lot of them lied about their age to get into the military and go overseas and what a culture shock that must have been for them.”

Lonie said of the over 3,500 Canadian soldiers that died at Vimy Ridge, around 400 were from Saskatchewan.

People both young and old congregated at the event venue to take in a performance and commemorate each and every one of those brave souls.

Remembering their sacrifice is something that attendee Vincent Murray said is lacking in this day and age.

“At this time in our history, there seems to be an absence of awareness or understanding of the meaningful contribution that our Canadian Forces made not only in the first war, but in other wars and conflicts.”

But one young attendee, 17-year-old Benjamin Olfert, was at the performance to learn more about World War I for his thesis on a historical event in the 20^th century.

He was also on hand to appreciate the important moment in Canadian history.

“Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. So, I feel like if we don’t learn about stuff that happened in the past or the mistakes that other people have made, there’s no way to learn about it. So we can prevent making mistakes in the future if we learn about other mistakes people have made in the past and learn to prevent that,” he said.