Homeless in Vancouver: War-like clouds gather over Edith Cavell elementary

On the afternoon of October 29 the southern sky visible from the west side of the Cambie Village area brought to mind thoughts of calamity and war, which was perhaps fitting given where I was standing.

I was looking southwest down Tupper Street—one street west of Cambie Street—at the intersection with West 20th Avenue. The school yard directly ahead of me belonged to Edith Cavell elementary school a grand old school built in 1908 and named in 1920 for an especially heroic First World War Red Cross nurse.

Remembering a martyr to compassion

Edith Louisa Cavell (1865-1915) was a British nurse who was running a clinic and a nursing school in Belgium when the First World War broke out. Her clinic was taken over by the Red Cross and during the first months of fighting on the Western Front, she was working to save the lives of both British and German soldiers during the invasion of Belgium by Germany.

In what remains one of the most infamous incidents of the First World War, Edith Cavell was arrested by German forces for her role in helping some 200 allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium. In the face of intense international condemnation she was executed by a German firing squad on October 12, 1915.

The motto of Edith Cavell Elementary, by the way, is: “take care of yourself, take care of others, and take care of this home.” Edith Cavell herself famously declared on October 11, 2015, the night before she was executed:

“They have all been very kind to me here. But this I would say, standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.”

After Edith Cavell’s execution she was memorialized in countless ways, large and small, across the British Commonwealth and in all the countries of the Allied powers.

In France and Belgium, “Edith” became a very popular name for girls, including the French singer Edith Piaf, born just two months after Cavell’s execution. In 1916, a mountain in Canada’s Jasper National Park, formerly known as la montagne de la Grande traversée (the Mountain of the Great Crossing), was rechristened Mount Edith Cavell.

The site of Edith Cavell’s original nursing school in Brussels, Belgium, is now home to the prestigious Edith Cavell Hospital.

A particularly good overview of Cavell’s life and legacy is provided on the web by the Belgian Edith Cavell Commemoration Group.