Quick Red Fox Press applauds the important work of the Vimy Oaks-Vimy Foundation (https://www.vimyfoundation.ca/vimy-oaks/). In April 1917, a few days after the Battle of Vimy Ridge, Canadian soldier Lieutenant Leslie H. Miller gathered a handful of acorns from a shattered oak on the battlefield and mailed them home to be planted on his farm in Scarborough, Ontario, now part of Toronto. The acorns have grown into mature oaks. Repatriation to Vimy Ridge, France, began in 2015 “with professional arborists taking cuttings (scions) from the crowns of the oaks which will be grafted onto base root stock―quercus robur. Like Ice Wine, this process must be done in the cold weather.”
. . . and a brief bio honouring one of Canada’s WW II soldiers:
William Alfred Gallagher (1917-2001)
Bill Gallagher was a soldier of World War II, a gunner in the Canadian Army (23rd Medium Battery, First Medium Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery), serving in France, Germany, and Italy. He was one of the more than 92,000 Canadian troops who played a vital role in the Italian Campaign, from the invasion of Sicily under the leadership of Field Marshal Montgomery, during which his convoy was torpedo-bombed, to the Battle of Ortona and beyond. He also saw special service as a radio operator with the Signal Corps, advancing in front of the artillery to establish and communicate adversarial coordinates.
Bill came home with four medals, three stars, and an additional four medals earned in athletic competition among Canadian soldiers training for war. His hearing was a casualty of battle. The continuum of gunfire and exploding shells (one in particular that destroyed a Canadian base in an Italian farmhouse) left him with about one-third hearing loss. My wife, Lenore, one of his seven children, kept vigil by his bedside the night he died. He was still haunted by the war. —Glen Ellis
Postscript:
Lenore (Bill was reading The Raven the night she was born) is an accomplished editor, a finalist for the Editors Canada award for best editor (although never a member of the association). Her calligraphy, for the ROM, is in Buckingham Palace, occasioned by a Queen Elizabeth II visit to the museum. The French-Canadian side of her ancestry dates to 1634.
Bill Gallagher was a soldier of World War II, a gunner in the Canadian Army (23rd Medium Battery, First Medium Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery), serving in France, Germany, and Italy. He was one of the more than 92,000 Canadian troops who played a vital role in the Italian Campaign, from the invasion of Sicily under the leadership of Field Marshal Montgomery, during which his convoy was torpedo-bombed, to the Battle of Ortona and beyond. He also saw special service as a radio operator with the Signal Corps, advancing in front of the artillery to establish and communicate adversarial coordinates.
Bill came home with four medals, three stars, and an additional four medals earned in athletic competition among Canadian soldiers training for war. His hearing was a casualty of battle. The continuum of gunfire and exploding shells (one in particular that destroyed a Canadian base in an Italian farmhouse) left him with about one-third hearing loss. My wife, Lenore, one of his seven children, kept vigil by his bedside the night he died. He was still haunted by the war. —Glen Ellis
Postscript:
Lenore (Bill was reading The Raven the night she was born) is an accomplished editor, a finalist for the Editors Canada award for best editor (although never a member of the association). Her calligraphy, for the ROM, is in Buckingham Palace, occasioned by a Queen Elizabeth II visit to the museum. The French-Canadian side of her ancestry dates to 1634.
A favourite photo of the “raven-haired" beauty.