Some 62 St. Albertans fought in the First World War, and at least 10 died during the conflict. Their names are immortalized on the cenotaph in front of St. Albert Place.
Canadian troops went to war with cloth caps and easily jammed rifles, and marched into a buzzsaw of mud, artillery, machine guns, and poison gas, said St. Albert historian Kelly Edgeworth.
“They had no idea what they were going into.”
St. Albert residents can learn more about the men on that monument from Edgeworth later this month as he kicks off the new Local Histories Lecture Series at the Musée Héritage Museum.
Edgeworth, a program specialist at the Musée, said the idea for this series came when museum staff realized they all had specialized knowledge in various fields. They decided to hold a seven-part series based on their specialties as they applied to St. Albert history.
Edgeworth said each talk will be led by a different staffer and cover a different topic, such as archeology, Métis languages, and (in his case) the First World War. The talks will happen once a month on Fridays and will initially start at 2 p.m.; they might change the time if no one shows up. Museum staff were excited to share their passions with the community through these talks.
“I could do a whole series on the First World War,” Edgeworth said.
St. Albert at war
Edgeworth said his talk will be on St. Albert and the First World War, with a specific focus on the 10 soldiers listed on the city’s cenotaph.
“The patriotic phrase at the time was, ‘I sign up for King and Empire,’” Edgeworth said, when asked why so many St. Albert residents signed up for the conflict.
Edgeworth said he chose to hold his talk in April because Canadian troops fought their first battle of the First World War back in April 1915. The fight was the Second Battle of Ypres, which was where German forces decided to test out their new super-weapon: chlorine gas.
Some 160 tonnes of that gas were let loose from thousands of canisters on April 22, 1915, forming a mysterious yellow-green cloud that rolled toward the Canadian, British, and French-Algerian forces, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia. It was the first large-scale poison gas attack in modern history.
“Nobody had gas masks,” Edgeworth said, so the troops had little defence against what came next: burning skin, blinded eyes, and liquefied lungs.
“Eventually, you die by drowning in your own body fluids.”
Famously, the Canadians did not retreat, and instead counterattacked, Edgeworth said.
“One of the quotes from [soldiers] at the time was, ‘We didn’t know enough to run away.’”
Canadian troops gained a reputation for courage and tenacity from this battle, the Canadian Encyclopedia notes. Lt.-Col. John McCrae would write In Flanders Fields during it.
But the cost was immense, Edgeworth said. Of the 10,000 Canadians that entered this battle, some 5,000 came out dead or wounded.
Edgeworth said more than half of the St. Albertans who served in the First World War were killed or physically maimed, with many more bearing mental scars. He hopes his talk would help today’s residents remember the sacrifices made by those people.
“‘Lest we forget,’ right?”
Edgeworth’s talk starts at 2 p.m. April 25 at the Musée. Admission is $3. Visit www.artsandheritage.ca/products/local-histories for details.
