A clay figure with its head bowed offered a starting point for reflection at this year’s Remembrance Day ceremony at St. Michaels University School. A gift from Belgium, it was one of 600,000 figures made to commemorate the soldiers and civilians who died on Belgian soil during the First World War.
Each November, our school community pauses to honour those who served and those who lost their lives in war, including the 134 students and faculty from our two founding schools who died in the First and Second World Wars. The Senior School strings orchestra, Middle School choir and Senior School Theatre Company contributed music and spoken word to the ceremony. Head of School Dr. Jeff Aitken read the letter Captain R.V. Harvey wrote to University School students before leaving for war in 1914. As Prefects read the Roll of Honour, archival photographs put faces to the names. The laying of wreaths and the sounding of The Last Post led into a moment of silence.
In his remarks, School Chaplain Keven Fletcher invited us to imagine the hands that shaped this figure and the life it represents.
Words of Remembrance from Keven Fletcher
Every year, we promise to remember. But how can those of us who are completely removed from war grasp the magnitude of something so far outside our personal experience?
Last year, our school received a gift that might provide a starting point.
Walter Cami, a dear friend of Susan Angus and our former Board Chair, David Angus, watched our Remembrance Day ceremony from his home in Belgium. As an honorary member of the South Alberta Regiment here in Canada and president of the Patriotic Associations in Belgium, he spoke of being “deeply impressed” by a ceremony he found both “thoughtful” and “meaningful.”
In response, he offered us this clay figure, head bowed but strong.
It was part of a land art installation called ComingWorldRememberMe. In 2018, figures like this one were placed on former First World War battlegrounds near Ypres, Belgium.
It was near Ypres that Captain R.V. Harvey, one of the founders of University School, was wounded. He later died as a prisoner of war.
Figures like the one before us were made in workshops across Belgium, shaped by the hands of locals and visitors, young and old alike. One figure was made for every civilian and soldier killed on Belgian soil during the First World War.
How many did they need to make? 600,000.
This one will eventually reside in our Chapel.
For now, though, I invite us to imagine the hands that shaped it, perhaps young, perhaps old.
I invite us to imagine the person it represents. Perhaps a soldier, perhaps a civilian. Perhaps very much like someone you hold dear. Perhaps even someone very much like yourself.
May this object connect us to a time and place outside our experience. And thank you, Walter Cami, and everyone else joining us online, for being with us as we remember.
