11 November 2022
This blog is to honour the memories of my two grandfathers, both Canadian veterans. I had not intended to write this until, earlier today, I realized that I share the same ambivalence toward Remembrance Day as did both of those men, Corporal Leslie Duncan Dewar, and Private Roderick Chalykoff.
To say that both saw active service is to understate their experiences. Grandpa Dewar was wounded and gassed at Vimy Ridge where he was nominated, a second time, for the Military Medal with the following commendation: “For his courageous attitude and contempt of danger. On April 9th 1917, at THELUS, during the initial barrage and previous hours to the barrage, he was in charge of a Stokes Gun. Although his gun and ammunition was buried twice by shells he kept his men together and dug his gun out each time and continued to operate same against the enemy.”
As a young boy I was curious about him, but he had died when my mother was nine months old so neither my mother nor I ever knew him. I heard only negative things about him from my beloved Nanny, Alice, his widow. But I’m a persistent researcher and maybe twenty years ago I spoke to my distant Uncle Rod Dewar, Grandpa’s oldest child, who told me some much more loving stories about his father, whom he clearly adored. One of the last things he told me was that Grandpa Dewar would talk to him about the war, a bit, but wouldn’t speak to Rod’s class or go to Remembrance Day services.
Four or five years ago, I tried more online research, just typing in my grandfather Dewar’s name. In two minutes, I saw more images of Grandpa than I had ever seen. A CBC journalist from New Brunswick had run a story on the four Dewar brothers, and one Dewar sister, who had signed up for WWI from Campbellton, NB. There was footage of two of the sons of my grandfather’s brother, Oliver, talking about Oliver and Les’s war. One of those men was named Leslie, as was another dear cousin, and my brother, whose middle name is the same.
Within a couple hours, I had the email addresses of Bob and Les Dewar, and I reached out immediately. They were in London and France, respectively, to commemorate the anniversary of Vimy. A few months later, when the family was munificently hosted by those two brothers in Fredericton, Bob told me that when he got my email in London he cried. I had written to him that I was the eldest grandson of Leslie Dewar whose two sons, Roderick and Berlyn, were now deceased and that I was the son of his youngest daughter, Carolyn. What he couldn’t have known was that it had also cost me tears to write that sentence bringing Grandpa Dewar back home in a way I could never have imagined.
In about 1970, my aunt, Dr. Judy Chalykoff married a kind, loving young man from her class at U of T. On that night, my grandfather Chalykoff and I spent some time alone. He wasn’t a drinker but had probably had a few drinks as toasts—and that was probably part of it, though the emotion of seeing his youngest child and only daughter married would also have contributed. Regardless, he started telling me about his war. That telling continued in sporadic bursts, for the rest of his life, which ended in 2002. Grandpa Chalykoff’s was a very different war from Grandpa Dewar’s as the former signed up in 1939 with the Royal Regiment in Toronto, after having served as a Cadet in high school. That was also the year Grandpa Dewar died of wounds from the gas and shrapnel the surgeons couldn’t extract. He was 45 years old.
Amongst the things Grandpa Chalykoff told me was that his first real exposure to death was clearing up churches in London that had been bombed by the Luftwaffe. This was daytime work as the bombs fell at that time so, as my grandfather explained, the congregants of weekday daytime services were mostly women and children.
The other entirely memorable tidbit was his insistence that, “I was no hero, Danny. The only reason I made it was because I was one of the first onto the boat—so one of the last off. The Krauts [sic] were out of ammunition, so I was taken prisoner.” Blue Beach, where the boat landed was part of the Dieppe Raid. He escaped from German POW camps three times and was listed in the Globe and Mail as missing in action for so long that my great-grandfather Chalykoff came to Oakville to pick up Rod’s wife, Hazel (nee Wanless) and son, Teddy, (my father) to keep them housed and fed until they could all understand whether or not Rod was alive.
Rod and Hazel left Northern Ontario a short time before our family moved to Oakville in 1967. So I lived near them, until they both passed, spending time with them often. Occasionally we would talk about incidents from the war. Every Remembrance Day week, I would call Grandpa Chalykoff and ask if he wanted to go to George’s Square in Oakville, for the service, which was within easy walking distance of us both. He declined. Every time.
Dan Chalykoff is working toward an M.Ed. in Counselling Psychology and accreditation in Professional Addiction Studies. He currently works as a supervised psychotherapist at CMHA-Hamilton where his primary focus is trauma. He writes these blogs to increase (and share) his own evolving understanding of ideas. Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery. Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the Bcc’d emailing list.
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