A Bear In War by Stephanie Innes and Harry Endrulat

A Bear In War is based on the true story of a young girl who sends her beloved teddy bear over to Belgium in the hopes it will protect her father during World War II.

In 1916, with World War I at a stalemate in Europe, ten-year-old Aileen Rogers and her new teddy bear named Teddy are traveling home in their sleigh to their farm in East Farnham, Quebec.  Teddy notices that Aileen is wearing a metal brace on her leg and limps. She reveals to Teddy that she had polio and now has to wear a brace to support her weakened leg. This means she can't run and jump like the other children. Teddy tells her that this doesn't matter to him. Aileen's younger brother Howard thinks Teddy is rather small, but her father points out that "Sometimes the smallest ones have the biggest hearts..."

There are plenty of chores to do both in the house and on the farm. Aileen and Teddy set the table and after dinner wash the dishes. Afterwards, Aileen and her mother help in the barn, feeding the horses hay and oats.  Aileen tells Teddy about the war explaining that war happens "when people from one country fight people from another country."  That night as her father reads stories about the war in the Montreal Gazette he is worried.

The morning is filled with more chores, which Aileen does with Teddy "snug in the pocket of Aileen's coat." That afternoon they return to town to attend church. In town they see recruiting posters for the war. There are few men at church as most of them are off fighting in Europe.

One night Aileen's life changes forever when her father tells her that he has enlisted to go fight in the war. Although Aileen is proud of her father, she tells Teddy that she wishes he could stay at home.Aileen's father travels to Valcartier where he trains to be a soldier. Aileen along with her mother, brother and Teddy travel to visit her father at Valcartier.

Aileen's father's letters eventually reveal that he has sailed to England on the RMS Hesperian. After time in England, her father is eventually sent to Belgium. After much consideration, Aileen decides to send her most prized possession, Teddy to her father, "...to remind him of home and to keep him safe."  Sadly, although Teddy would return home, Aileen's father did not. Teddy would see all that the war would involve and Aileen's father's heroic efforts to help the soldiers as a medic. He was recovered from a pocket in her father's uniform and sent home.

Discussion

A Bear In War is a truly a deeply moving and endearing picture book. Although the story is based on real events about a young girl losing her father in the Battle of Passchendaele in the fall of 1917, it also a story about love and sacrifice.

Aileen Rogers' Teddy

Aileen's father, Lawrence Browning Rogers served with the Fifth Canadian Mounted Rifles from 1915 to 1917. Lawrence wrote over two hundred letters to his wife, Janet May in that time. Both Aileen and her brother Howard also wrote to their father. These letters and the story of Teddy remained hidden until 2002 when Lawrence Rogers' granddaughter, Roberta Roberts Innes (Howard's daughter) discovered them in a family briefcase along with other memorabilia including Teddy. A Bear In War and a second book, Bear On The Homefront were written by Lawrence Roger's great-granddaughter, Stephanie Innes and children's author, Harry Endrulat.

The authors tell Aileen's family story from the point of view of Teddy, Aileen's new teddy bear. Teddy is kind and loyal. Aileen and Teddy's relationship is at once sweet and tender. She tells Teddy her secrets, the first being that she has had polio and has to wear a leg brace. Teddy responds, "That makes no difference to me."

Teddy immediately fits into the Rogers family, accompanying Aileen as she helps with dinner and chores on the farm.  Like Aileen, Teddy doesn't like war and he misses Daddy. Eventually after her father goes to war, Aileen and Teddy come up with the idea to send him to war as well, in the hopes that Teddy can protect her father.  Teddy and Aileen who have been a comfort to one another during this difficult time, decide to make their own sacrifice and send him overseas to France. During his time at war, Teddy tells young readers a bit about what it was like for soldiers during World War I.  "A lot of the time we sat in deep trenches. They were wet and cold -- and there were rats everywhere. But the trenches helped protect us from bullets and bombs....Sometimes we got hurt when a bomb exploded nearby. Sharp things would hit us." Sadly Aileen's father does not survive and is killed  while treating soldiers during the Battle of Passchendaele. Teddy survives the war and eventually is returned to the Rogers family. His own secret is "that I fought in the war in the pocket of a hero."

A Bear In War captures the uncertainty, fear and loss experienced by the families of soldiers during the long years of the Great War - a war that was supposed to end war but ended up being a continuous blood bath. Aileen's story is very much enhanced by Brian Deine's oil painting illustrations done in soft tones that accent the warmth of Aileen and Teddy's friendship, and how friendship can help carry us through tough times.

A Bear In War is an excellent picture book that offers children a gentle introduction what life was like during the early part of the 20th century, about how families coped during wartime and what life as a soldier was like.  Teddy is the teddy bear we all imagined having when we were children.

Teddy image: https://www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/objects-and-photos/art-and-culture/toys-and-models/teddy-bear/


Book Details:

A Bear In War by Stephanie Innes and Harry Endrulat
Toronto: Key Porter Books Limited      2008

The Vimy Oaks. A Journey to Peace by Linda Granfield

The Vimy Oaks: A Journey to Peace tells the remarkable story of Leslie Miller, a Canadian soldier who brought a few acorns from the oak trees at Vimy Ridge back to Canada and how one hundred years later Vimy may once again have oak trees.

When World War I began in mid-1914, Leslie Miller was teaching school in Saskatchewan. He enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and was sent over to England in 1915. Leslie who was well educated joined the army's Signal Corps. He was stationed at Shorncliffe Camp, a military base near Folkestone, England. As a member of the Signal Corps, it was Leslie's responsibility to send and receive communications between various units of the military. During his time in England, Miller trained other signallers. Eventually he sailed across the English Channel to France. During his time overseas Miller kept several diaries filled with observations about the people and the towns in France.

Miller was part of the Canadian troops who fought in the battle for Vimy Ridge in April, 1917. After the battle, while on Vimy Ridge, Leslie Miller gathered acorns from the destroyed oak trees and mailed them home to his family in Canada. Miller didn't return home until early 1919. Eventually he returned to the Miller farm and the acorns from Vimy Ridge grew into oak trees. Miller eventually married and he and his wife, Mary Isabel "Essie" Fraser called their farm Vimy Oaks.

As the years passed by, many new Canadians helped the Millers on their farm. One such person was Monty McDonald who helped harvest the produce, remove brush and helped with the apple harvest. Leslie and Essie eventually sold their farm and after their deaths and the Miller  farm was purchased by a church. The Vimy Oaks however, remained.  The grew tall and very large.

When Monty McDonald traveled to Europe and visited the Vimy Memorial in France, he noted that there were no oak trees. Vimy Ridge had large stands of oak trees prior to World War I but the battles had destroyed the forests and scarred the earth around the ridge. McDonald wondered if it would be possible to reforest Vimy Ridge with the oak trees descended from the Vimy Oaks on the Miller farm in Canada. They would serve as a living memorial to those who died there. The second half of Granfield's picture book explains how McDonald's idea was to become a reality.

Discussion

Linda Granfield has crafted an engaging non-fiction book that informs young readers about a little known piece of Canadian history. This year we remember the Battle of Vimy Ridge which began 100 years ago on April 9, 1917 and continued until the final hill was taken on April 12th. The Battle of Vimy Ridge was of supreme importance to Canada because it was the first time four Canadian divisions, fighting together as a unit, accomplished what no other military force was able to, and that was capture the ridge held by German soldiers. It was a carefully planned attack but it came at an enormous price - the deaths of thousands of Canadians with many more thousands wounded. Whether it is myth or not, Canadians have claimed that this battle signified the beginning of Canada as a nation in its own right.

Lieutenant Leslie Miller

Granfield tells only the basics of the Vimy Ridge story. Instead her focus is on how one Canadian soldier's decision to save a few acorns from Vimy, grew into a remarkable legacy. The story of Leslie Miller, a member of the Signal Corps, is illustrated by the muted oil paintings of illustrator Brian Deines. The story is further enhanced by many interesting photographs of the Vimy Memorial, Canadian troops, the trenches of Vimy,  Leslie and Essie later in life, and so forth. The second part of the story focuses on the efforts of Monty McDonald to see the Vimy Oaks from the Miller farm return in some form to France.

McDonald's original plan called for acorns to be gathered from the Vimy Oaks on the old Miller woodlot (all that remains of Leslie and Essie's farm today). However, when McDonald went to collect acorns two years ago, the trees produced only a handful of acorns. Not enough to start a crop of seedlings. He devised a second plan which involved having arborists scale the trees and take cuttings of the most recent growth from the top and graft them onto other trees to grow. Over one thousand trees were waiting in a nursery in West Flamborough to be planted at the Vimy memorial in France. However the French had to refuse the trees because they were concerned about the introduction of a new pathogen that could harm the native trees in France. Instead, these Canadian saplings will be planted a World War I memorials across the country. This past year the Vimy Oaks in the Miller woodlot produced thousands of acorns which McDonald collected. Two hundred acorns were sent to a nursery in Paris where they have be nurtured. While they will not be ready for planting on the centenary, they will be ready for the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I next year.

Painting by  Australian Captain William Longstaff showing the dead marching up Vimy Ridge.

The Vimy oaks, when repatriated to Vimy Ridge, will help us to remember the sacrifice of so many young Canadians. In 1916, Leslie Miller wrote in his diary, "I am writing seated at the foot of a large oak..." One hundred years on, may people sit beneath the oak trees, not to write war diaries but to write and read in peace.

The Vimy Foundation's Vimy Oaks webpage (https://vimyfoundation.ca/projects/vimy-centennial-park) has a brief write-up.

Macleans Magazine (https://macleans.ca/news/world/a-century-later-remembering-the-hard-win-at-vimy-ridge/) explores why Vimy Ridge became so important to Canada.

Image credits: 

Vimy Ridge: https://www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/objects-and-photos/art-and-culture/official-art/vimy-ridge/

Leslie Miller: https://vimyoakslegacy.ca/en/lt-leslie-miller/

Book Details:

The Vimy Oaks: A Journey to Peace by Linda Granfield
North Winds Press       2017
33 pp.