Remembrance Road – The Great Wars in Photographs
Hearing the words of Prince Charles at the Battle of Vimy Ridge centenary in 2017, Justine Macdonald writes that she felt proud to be a Canadian.
Speaking before some 25,000 people gathered at the Vimy monument on April 9, Prince Charles said it “was and remains, the single bloodiest day in Canadian military history.”
Those characteristics that made the Canadians successful, Prince Charles observed, remain a part of us today.
Listening to Prince Charles describes Canada’s role at Vimy, Macdonald, a Nova Scotian photographer, said she felt a strong sense of national pride. Vimy Ridge after all was not just a turning point for Canada as a nation, it was the first major Allied victory of the First World War.
Vimy Ridge was just one of many battles that took place in Europe during the two world wars. Between 2001 and 2017, Macdonald toured many of them, including Vimy, with her camera. Macdonald captures those battlefields and their many monuments in a series of splendid photographs that are about to be published as a book. As she did with the Battle of Vimy Ridge, she accompanies the photographs with terse descriptions of the battles.
Macdonald’s book, Remembrance Road, is described as a Canadian photographer’s journey through European battlefields and cemeteries. Actually, more than the First World War and Second World War are covered in the book, which also mentions Canada’s involvement in modern day battlefields.
Growing up in a military family, living for a time in Europe and deeply interested in military history, Macdonald wanted to know more about the battlefields she’d heard about and visited. While she made a series of special tours in the year leading up to the Vimy Ridge centenary, previously she had spent decades touring and photographing battlefields around the world. She says that her book, Remembrance Road, is “the culmination of almost 40 years of travel, photography and experiences … mixed with a desire to ensure we remember the past.”
While it has some 150 pages and nearly more than double that as far as the number of pictures, Remembrance Road is more than photographic coverage of the world wars. Major battles are written about as well, offering us a history lesson that captures the horrors of war.
A public book launch for Remembrance Road will be held at the Kings County Museum, along Cornwallis Street in Kentville, at 7 p.m. Nov. 26.