My Dad, Major Arthur Grosvenor Piddington

By Helen Piddington (Campbell), Blind Channel

My father died at age eighty, in 1960, a veteran of the Great War, the war to end all wars: 1914–18.

He graduated from the Royal Military College in Kingston as a top student in 1900. Canada had no army then so he could choose a British regiment. He chose the Royal Horse Artillery (RHA). Before leaving home, his father made him promise that when he died, Dad would return to Canada and look after his two unmarried sisters. He died early in 1906, so Dad kept his promise and returned to Canada. His senior officers were appalled.

When the war was declared in 1914, he tried to join the RHA. Still in disgrace for putting his father before his regiment, he was demoted to the Royal Field Artillery and sent to Salonika in northern Greece. He fought there for five years under terrible conditions, coming home with PTSD (known then as shell shock), unable to speak for months and prone to rage from the absurdity of all he had witnessed, especially the terrible waste of lives—so many were killed by friendly fire. With no more appetite for war, he grew apples for market in the Eastern Townships of Quebec until the family moved west in 1924, where he grew most of our food but could not, would not, kill a chicken.

When I returned from France in 1966, to set up a printmaking studio in West Vancouver, I spent as much time as I could with Mum, on Vancouver Island. She enjoyed living alone but loved being driven on adventures down strange roads in areas unknown to both of us. Once, not far from Duncan, we came upon a place that seemed frozen in time. Roads were just passable for our ancient Hillman, but the land was covered with wooden barns and houses—all of them bleached silvery grey—ghostly from years of neglect. There wasn’t a soul to be seen! What had happened?

“I think I know,” said Mum. “This area was pre-empted by young Englishmen in the early 1900s but, before they could get the land producing enough to send for their families, the Great War was declared. So all of them downed their tools: returned to England, then left for the front—most of them never returning!”

So for all those years, this land had been untouched, unused. Huge maples, alders and cedars filled fields and empty spaces. Orchards had trees growing to great heights, some with scraggy fruit. Driveways were impassable, choked with growth. They had chosen good land! But why had no one else claimed it?

With the bustling town of Duncan so close, we found this silent, empty space troubling and I have never been able to get those ghostly valleys and hillsides out of my head.

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