The honour and horror of war collide in “Over the Ridge”

by V. S. Wells on April 10th, 2024 at 8:00 AM

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Growing up, Brendan McLeod’s favourite book was Vimy: Pierre Berton’s 1986 fictionalization of a harrowing World War I battle.

McLeod read the book when he was 12, and the fact he was the same age as some of the underaged boys who enlisted in the army resonated with the future author, poet, and founder of esoteric folk group The Fugitives.

“I remember just being blown away that I was that age, reading about trench warfare, and people my age went through this,” he recalls. “That always stayed with me.”

Initially, McLean and The Fugitives explored some of the thornier parts of World War I in Ridge, a musical storytelling show. The music—soldier tunes sung by troops to raise morale—were reworked into The Fugitives’ Juno-nominated album Trench Songs.

And now, the project is seeing a new lease of life with Over the Ridge, which premieres at New Westminster's Massey Theatre on April 13.

Although it’s still based on the 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge that captivated and horrified McLeod, the work is expanding—adding dancers alongside McLeod’s spoken word and The Fugitives’ music. Together, the production hopes to spark conversations about the cost of war and its disproportionate impact on young lives. After all, World War I’s doomed youth were not just the dead ones.

Part of the complexity in talking about the First World War is the fact there are no veterans left. As McLeod points out, instead we’re left to rely on records and stories—which are easy to manipulate or reframe for political purposes.

The Battle of Vimy Ridge serves as a prime example: it was “just a waste of human life,” as he describes it. While technically a success (in that the Canadian and British troops recaptured the ridge from the German army), the offensive cost thousands of lives and didn’t have a concrete impact on the rest of the war effort.

The canonization of the event in Canadian culture through the latter part of the 20th Century whitewashes “the insane things that [soldiers] were put through,” McLeod notes. Remembering the glorious elements obscures the ghastly ones. Both Ridge and Over the Ridge try to unravel the reality from the propaganda, even as firsthand memory is lost.

“Part of that is the nature of intergenerational communication,” McLeod says, “but part of that is the military industrial complex using it to justify further wars—to glorify what’s happened in the past in order to justify what’s going to happen in the future of what is currently happening right now.”

The futility—and the fragility of human life—is made more apparent with the inclusion of extra people on stage. With choreography from Ballet BC dancer Jacob Williams, four dance artists—from Arts Umbrella and Ballet BC’s emerging artists program—join McLeod and The Fugitives on stage.

Briana Del Mundo, Pei Lun Lai, Sophia Makarenko, and Nathan Coburn fuse contemporary and classical dance styles to offer an emotional interpretation of McLeod’s words. The dancers’ relative youth is also a welcome addition to the production: The Fugitives are in their forties, so dancers who are two decades their junior act as a physical reminder of how young the Canadian soldiers at Vimy Ridge really were.

Besides the addition of dancers, another big change since the original 2020 production of Ridge is the social context. High-profile wars now dominate the news in a way they didn’t four years ago. Some conflicts are new; some are finally making it to the Western reporting cycle after years of violence.

“Man, I really am so sad that this show is so relevant,” McLeod says with a heavy sigh. “So much of what we talk about in the show, about the exploitation of young, young humans—or any vulnerable group—by elites, in order to solidify their power in some ridiculous capitalist sense, and all the people who are slaughtered: it’s exactly what we’re seeing in these conflicts.”

Art always hits harder when it’s timely.

“The battle of Vimy Ridge is having its 107th anniversary this year,” McLeod adds, “and it feels like the same story.”

History doesn’t repeat so much as echo. Perhaps in 100 years’ time, people will be exploring what contemporary wars tell them about the state of their world; right now, looking to the past might help us better understand the present moment, too.