On Remembrance Day: who are you remembering?

Remembrance Day is a time when many people reflect back on relatives who have fought in previous wars. It can be daunting, though, to find out more about people you've lost. 

Saskatchewan historian Bill Waiser is no stranger to searching war records. His great uncle William Stewart Ritchie fought — and died — on the battlefields during the the First World War. 

Waiser wanted to find out more about his ancestor. He says Library and Archives Canada is the best place to start, so he did just that. That search yields attestation papers, the two page form completed by soldiers and nurses who signed up to serve.

Those papers are online, so I found his attestation papers, which list his address, his occupation. He was an electrician. It lists his birth as 1887. It gives his physical description.- Bill Waiser

The search wasn't quite as straightforward as Waiser had hoped for, though. First off, Ritchie was a fairly common surname.

More significantly "what really threw me was that [my great uncle] lied about his birth date. He actually said he was younger than he was. So I found his attestation paper, what I thought was him, but the date was a little off."

Researching a mystery

"Then I went to the War Graves Commission records and I found that he had been memorialised on the Vimy monument. That's where I also found that he had been wounded, buried — where he had been killed. And then when they went back after the battle to exhume his body there's no body to be found. He's missing."

This is true for many soldiers who died during the First World War. It doesn't mean the trail stops there for research, though.

That's where the online census becomes helpful. Waiser says he "found out he was actually born in 1884, so he lied about his age. He said he was three years younger."

Waiser didn't stop with online searches.

Visiting European Memorial Sites

For him and his wife Marley Waiser, it was important to visit "the places where our relatives fell, died. And we were there. And we were the first members of our family to go there."  

They had some incredibly moving experiences overseas. At the Vimy monument they discovered his great uncle's name inscribed in its base.

70 per cent of Canada's war dead were killed by artillery. It was the big killer, the big guns. And a lot of people were never found.- Bill Waiser, historian

"When people look at the Vimy monument, those photographs or film coverage, you do see those two reaching arms northward.  But a lot of people don't realize that the base of the monument is ringed with the names of Canadian men who died in France, " Waiser said.

"Before you go, though you can go online and find out exactly what panel ... The walls of those cemeteries are covered with the names of the missing," he advised. 

"70 per cent of Canada's war dead were killed by artillery. It was the big killer, the big guns. And a lot of people were never found, so the walls of the cemeteries might have the names of the missing."

Vimy monument and Menin Gate

"They're on the Vimy monument, or the other place you can go to is the Menin Gate in Ypres. There are 50,000 names of the missing on the Menin Gate in Ypres. And every night at Ypres, since 1928, every night at 8 o'clock without failure, except during Nazi occupation of Belgium, there's a ceremony.  And it's remarkable because of the people that turn out for that ceremony every night regardless of the weather. They come from around the world to be there and remember the fallen."