History of war veterans takes young B.C. filmmaker all across Canada

Clifford Brunt would be chuckling if he could right now about what he’d set in motion.

Eric Brunt, a 26-year-old from Victoria and Clifford’s grandson, has wrapped up an ambitious, 13-month journey that took him from Vancouver Island to Cape Spear, N.L., Canada’s easternmost point, eventually interviewing 400 veterans of the Second World War along the way.

The journey was sparked by the stories his grandpa told him about the war, and the regret Brunt had that those stories hadn’t been recorded before Clifford died at the age of 95 in 2013.

Brunt is putting the stories he heard together into a documentary called “Last Ones Standing”, which he hopes will debut in 2020, coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the end of the war.

“I grew up with my grandfather not really telling too much about his war experiences, but it would start to come up around Christmases when we were all around the dinner table here and there,” Brunt, a graduate of University of B.C.’S film studies program, said.

“When he passed away it hit me that the few stories that he had told us were all we had in terms of his younger years and what he’d done serving Canada. It made me wonder, ‘Gosh, are there other men and women who served Canada and who also never really wanted to, or just never had the platform, to tell their story?’”

And if he was going to get those stories, there was urgency to get started.

Of the 1.1 million Canadians who served in the Second World War there are about 40,000 still alive and they average 94 years of age. Theirs are necessarily fascinating stories, and Brunt’s documentary will undoubtedly be too short to tell all 400 he collected.

But the young filmmaker’s story is fascinating, too.

Imagine how elated the veterans he talked to must have been to have someone Brunt’s age take an interest in their life and sacrifice.

His quest began slowly, tracking down, say, a veteran interviewed in The Province or Vancouver Sun. He purchased a Ford Transit Connect — one of those boxy little vans like Canada Post uses — converted it to handle his equipment (with a work bench doubling as a bed) and set out.

Brunt tried to get funding but was unable to and used his savings (when those dried up after a few months, he raised $12,000 through Gofundme).

He began by making cold calls at local Canadian legions, heading into the Interior and beyond to Alberta and Saskatchewan to find his interviewees. He thought he’d reach the Maritimes by fall.

But as word spread calls started coming in, and he replied to every one of them. Time was always a factor and in one heartbreaking case, it ran out.

In one case after a radio interview in Ontario a man from Summerside, P.E.I., called in to say that although he didn’t remember Brunt’s grandfather, that he’d worked at the same base when the elder Brunt had taught pilots how to fly.

“I got to Prince Edward Island and gave him a call, and the number was out of service,” Brunt said. “I thought, ‘oh no,’ and when I looked up his name in Google — sure enough his obituary was there.”