ABSTRACT
With the approaching Canadian Sesquicentennial, the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Confederation of Canada in 1867, and the national government’s emphasis on the ‘Road to 2017’, also marking the mythic Battle of Vimy Ridge in France, and Canada’s ‘coming of age’, there is a resurgence of community interest in the two world wars and how they are remembered on the home front. For British Columbia (BC), the most westerly province in Canada, this is no different. The iconic photograph ‘Wait for me, Daddy’, taken in New Westminster, a town near Vancouver, depicts a young boy running toward his father who is in a column of departing troops. It is often chosen to represent war in British Columbia and carries a subliminal message: that the war was elsewhere, and that one had to leave to get there. This speaks to a disconnect that contemporary Canadians have with war memory and war commemoration.
