‘Time warp’ into our nation’s history

Karen Begg makes a cast of an Ambler carving at Maison Blanche, a refuge used by soldiers in France. in Gosnay, France the sniper and his comrades were involved in leading up to Vimy. “Neuve Chapelle. Ypres. Langemarck. Givenchy. The Bluff. Sanctuary Wood. Somme.”

“What I like to think is that, because of my grandfather’s skill, that he helped some of the other men as they carved into those walls,” says Mike Ambler from his home in Calgary.

Mike is the Aleck’s grandson. He visited the caves a few years back with Karen Begg, an Albertan sculptor/ artist. Begg took several castings of Aleck’s carvings and reproduced them for his descendants. Three bronze copies hang in Mike’s front hall.

“Maybe some of what he was doing was leaving his mark,” Mike says. “But maybe some of it was about taking his and the other soldiers’ minds off the war. All those men in that cave would have had a pretty good understanding of what the world was like above ground.”

W. P. Beckett and T. Mason carved the mailbox on March 15, 1917. Beckett was later shot in the arm, but survived the war, as did Mason, who had his pinky finger blown off.

Bruce Simpson, one of the Durand volunteers, estimates each carving would have taken about 40 hours to complete.

“It is like a time warp, walking down here,” he says. “It is a labour of love doing this work.”

Aleck took a bullet in the left leg and had to wear a clunky shoe on his left foot thereafter. It did not stop him from returning to Canada after the war until a death in the family led to a move back to England to run a family business. Aleck kept up with his carving, though, and was best known for executing elaborate wedding and anniversary cakes that were auctioned off at church fundraisers. He was also an amateur sketch artist.

He died in 1974, but his carvings endure some 100 years on, transporting us to a time when Canadians huddled beneath the ground and the attack on Vimy drew nearer.