The author’s great-grandfather Enos Beck fought at Vimy Ridge. Edith Reading’s father, another Great War vet, took this photo at the Vimy Ridge pilgrimage in 1936. Neither man ever recounted his war experiences.

I don’t fit the stereotype; I’m not a History Channel-addicted senior citizen, a gun geek or an armchair warmonger. I am, however, an unrepentant Canadian war buff. I’m a rabid proselytizer, resisting the twin opposing tendencies to glorify or ignore the country’s military exploits. Like it or not, the world wars have shaped our national character. Revisiting them is a necessary act of understanding and remembrance. For this buff, it’s also a family quest.

AN OLD SOLDIER

My father, a retired millwright, chuckles while describing my great-grandfather Enos Beck. “His family figured he was a hard old bugger. But we got along well with him. He liked people, and he raised bees. Not many. Good thing, too. The ones he did have stung the hell out of him.”

Often my mother’s coffee guest, he hunted and fished with dad and was a regular at the Christmas dinner table. With thick white hair and a high, northern-European forehead, he’d sit in our La-Z-Boy, looking like a 90-year-old version of both dad and myself. They would talk and laugh while gramps gnawed at hazel nuts with his remaining teeth. Inevitably, my mom would command me to help. I’d be forced to take a nutcracker to the soppy things. But, grandfather was popular with the kids. We’d laugh crazily, pulling his arms trying to unseat him.

Decades later, I struggled to reconstruct his First World War service.

GREAT WAR VACATION

At the Vimy Ridge National Historic Site I became a war buff.

It’s a fall day in 2001. Maple leaves litter the ground. German and Canadian trenches are shored up with cement brick. Between them, gaping craters were punched when underground mines were detonated in April 1917 during the Canadian assault on the ridge. Vimy undulates with shell craters now covered in lush grass. The ridge is mowed by a herd of sheep, as Vimy hasn’t been fully cleared of unexploded shells. Occasionally, a sheep will blow up. Visitors must stay on designated pathways.

The Canadian National Vimy Memorial sits atop this ridge. Its twin spires tower over the names of 11,285 Canadian soldiers missing and presumed dead at the Great War’s end.

Both sides supported their front lines with tunnels. Beneath Vimy, mildew tints the initials of Canadian servicemen chiselled into moist chalk. Safe from bullets, artillery and poison gas, these caves housed hospitals, living quarters and were used to transport men and equipment.

Today the tunnels are closed to the public, but my guide is a Calgarian. She offers to take me below ground after the trench tour. There is one unexploded shell for every square metre of soil at Vimy, she says. It will take seven centuries to clear the Great War battlegrounds of explosives.

Vimy inspired both awe and embarrassment at my ignorance of Canadian military history. Since Vimy, I’ve carved many notches on my war-buff bandolier. I’ve visited military museums in Belgium, France, England and Canada, consumed dozens of war books and movies, but only recently talked to relatives about my grandfather.

GRANDPA DYNAMITE

“The only thing he ever told me about the war was that it made him hate cheese,” says my dad about grandfather’s recollections. Convalescing from “trench fever” in England, he’d eaten nothing but. Dad also heard he’d been buried alive in an explosion.

After the war, grandfather routinely carried dynamite in his fishing kit. Grasping, I ask if this had anything to do with the war. No, he just really liked the idea of fishing with dynamite. He was rumoured to have tried it once, but the fish sank to the bottom rather than floating. And that missing finger? Lost it working at a brewery.

A lumberjack born in 1885, he had moved from Lunenburg, N.S. to Prince Albert, Sask. with his wife Ethel in 1906 to work log booms on the North Saskatchewan River. “He wasn’t afraid of anything, ever,” says dad. “Working the logs wasn’t a job for a sissy.” He was well fit for military duty. However, like many soldiers, he later refused to discuss the war. “He came out of it partially deaf,” says my father. “His nerves weren’t too good.”

I’M STILL LIVING

I didn’t know when or where he’d served, and so sent for his attestation papers (his official war record) from Library and Archives Canada. A thick stack of photocopied documents arrived by mail. Thin on commentary, they simply describe grandfather’s soldierly conduct and character as “very good,” his complexion as “ruddy.” However, cross-referencing the dates of his service with his battalion’s war diary, I made a surprising inference: he was at Vimy Ridge, the nation’s definitive Great War battle with the Winnipeg-based 28th (Northwest) Canadian Infantry Battalion. The 28_th attacked through the tunnel system I had visited. On the battlefront, the men emerged from a mine crater, capturing their objectives, including several concrete bunkers. Of 44 casualties, 11 were killed.

It was a satisfying revelation, but I wanted something in my grandfather’s own words. My relatives had photos, no letters survived. Then, in October, I contacted a cousin I’d never met. Sharon Miner, of Moose Jaw, is an affable genealogy buff. She had a postcard booklet sent to our grandmother from an English hospital. A handful of digital images arrived by email. Grandfather’s short note gave me a chill. “I’m sending you a few lines just to let you know that I'm still living and getting on well.” On sick furlough, he promised to send a letter and signed “XXXXXX.” The note was likely a great relief to his family; he was, indeed, still living.

My grandfather’s experience remains an inferred sketch, a glimpse down a dark tunnel at the end of which a young man fought amid chaos and carnage and was forever scarred. The war may have rendered many soldiers incapable of reliving it, but this underscores the importance of studying war, period.

A WAR BUFF IS BORN

In my wife’s grandmother’s Edmonton apartment, a scripted certificate honours Peter Packham for his Great War service. An “old contemptible” from London, 89-year-old Edith Reading’s father enlisted early. He was gassed, but continued to serve as a bayonet instructor. In 1936, after the family moved to Canada, he returned to Europe with his wife and daughter for The Vimy Pilgrimage. Thousands of Canadian servicemen were honoured in Britain and France. The Packhams attended a lavish garden party at Buckingham Palace and a rededication at Vimy Ridge. “I was only 16,” says Gran, laughing. “My mother had a terrible time trying to keep us away from the booze.”

He was suitably impressed with the honours, but her father never recounted his service. “He never spoke about it,” she says.

In the car after our visit, my wife Erin is silent. She typically rolls her eyes when I start another war book or plead to rent Stalingrad on DVD yet again. Finally she says, “Do you think we can find my great-grandfather’s war record?”

To obtain attestation papers of Canadian servicemen and view online battalion war diaries, visit www.collectionscanada.gc.ca.