Ridge gives prominence to untold stories from the First World War

At long last, the multidisciplinary piece by playwright Brendan McLeod and the Fugitives has its Vancouver premiere

By Gail Johnson

Ridge.

The Firehall Arts Centre presents Ridge from October 26 to November 3

AT THE END of the First World War, some 15,000 Canadian troops were waiting to come back home—and they waited and waited in a place called Kinmel Park in North Wales for months. In March 1919, riots broke out because the camp ran out of food, winter had been harsh, the Spanish flu epidemic was prevalent, and there was a shortage of ships to get them back on home soil.

It’s a story that’s little known, and it’s one that forms part of Ridge, a multimedia production by playwright Brendan McLeod with live music by his folk band, the Fugitives, that is soon having its Vancouver premiere.

“The government really lauded its relationship to veterans but in reality they left them hanging after the war was done,” McLeod says from his Toronto home in a phone interview with Stir. “People are unaware of the situation and the reason no one knows about it is because the record of it was sealed for 100 years; it just became unsealed five or 10 years ago. There’s a little Wikipedia entry on it, but to get more real information on it I had to mail away to a British historian who specializes in this and had a little publication he self-printed.”

The Kinmel Park riot also gets a passing mention in Vimy by Pierre Berton, which was McLeod’s favourite book when he was a teenager, he told Stir in a 2020 interview. The Battle of Vimy Ridge, which took place in 1917, has been considered the “battle that made Canada”, but what has been often overlooked is that it killed more than 10,000 young soldiers. It’s this kind of untold story that motivated McLeod to create Ridge.

The piece was set to open in March 2020 at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts but then the pandemic hit. As a result, McLeod and his team made a film version of the work, which streamed late in 2020. Then earlier this year the crew teamed up with the Massey Theatre for Over the Ridge, a version that included dance performances by Ballet BC and Arts Umbrella members.

The original Ridge has since gone on to tour some 30 theatres to critical acclaim across Canada and is finally having its homecoming in Vancouver. The soundtrack has been released as Trench Songs, the fifth album from the Fugitives, a collection of revived protest songs from the trenches given a contemporary musical setting that suits the bass, guitar, violin, banjo, and harmonica makeup of McLeod’s band. The release garnered a 2022 Juno Award nomination for best traditional roots album.

The Fugitives

Ridge, which features direct storytelling and verbatim theatre, also delves into the fact that there were many teenagers who fought for Canada during the First World War.

“As a teenager it struck me that when it comes to World War I what never really gets talked about is the amount of teenage soldiers who were part of it; there were 250,000 British teenagers and 20,000 Canadians,” McLeod says. “We just don’t tend to talk about that. There was a 12-year-old who fought for Canada in World War I. Ridge is about making more room for real versions of the story that don’t tend to get popularity in our society.”

Ridge is all the more apt given current events in other parts of the globe. It’s a piece that is often programmed around Remembrance Day but is fitting no matter the time of year, McLeod says.

“It’s just gotten more and more resonant,” McLeod says. “There’s the focus on child soldiers or just the killing of teenagers, and we’re seeing a ton of that in the world right now, unfortunately. And I have read about some thinkers who said before the last few years the killing of children in war was never allowed, it was always frowned on in any time period. We’re not seeing the same disgust for whatever reason and that is disappointing.

“Part of grieving and remembering correctly is to keep our critical faculties up,” he adds, “to make sure we don’t repeat the same mistakes.”  

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