MOOSE JAW — RCMP veteran Garth Hampson had the honour of singing O Canada during the city’s second annual veterans’ banner program ceremony, which was one way he honoured his father during the event.
Hampson, 90, is a former Moose Javian who now resides in Ottawa and was once a soloist with the RCMP Band. After the ceremony, he expressed his excitement about the program and thought every Canadian community should have one.
“Because how are young people going to know about people who left here and never came home?” said the 34-year RCMP veteran, whose father Sidney Thomas Hampson now hangs from a banner.
The picture the family used of their patriarch was originally a group photo, with only Sidney smiling in it. Hampson noted that one man in the group was killed right next to his father, who also received wounds.
Garth’s daughter, Diana, said they have letters that Sidney wrote to his sister from the trenches, with all those missives online at The Canadian Letters and Images Project. She noted that the soldier talked regularly about his friend, Arthur (Artie) Taylor, with whom he enlisted.
“They did all the big battles, and then all of a sudden, (in) one letter, (Sidney wrote), ‘We lost Artie today.’ So Artie never came home here to Moose Jaw,” she said.
“And … the older I get, the more I think (that) he was just a young lad. Like, how could he even know what he was signing up for, to go there and fight like that?”
Sidney — who fought in most of the Canadian Corps’ major battles, including at Vimy Ridge in the first wave of the attack —also wrote that the trenches were filled with mud and rats, and that he was gassed during a battle. Diana noted that that injury killed him at age 70 in 1964.
“The Great War was not so great,” she chuckled, adding all the men on the banners are “Canadian heroes.”
Garth became emotional while discussing his appreciation of seeing his dad on a banner. He noted that Sidney — whose brother Joseph was mayor — was community-minded, served on many boards and committees and promoted tourism.
Sidney rarely spoke of his war experiences to Garth, but the latter’s son has conducted thorough research about his grandfather.
Meanwhile, the family has visited the “fabulously looked after” war cemeteries in Europe to see the graves of other relatives, including their uncle, John (Jack) Alexander Sealy, who lived at 1021 Montgomery Street and died during the Great War. They plan to submit his name for next year’s banner program.
Sealy’s original wood cross is in a glass case at the Moose Jaw Armoury, while the family has his medals.
