Centennial professor uncovers the living history behind military achievements
Laura Godfrey
Arts & Lifestyle Editor
Ted Barris has spent the better part of his life tracking down living history.
He has interviewed and befriended Canadian veterans from WWI and onward, and over several decades this author, broadcaster and Centennial College journalism professor has written 16 books on our country’s history. But in his latest book, Breaking the Silence: Veterans’ Untold Stories From the Great War to Afghanistan, Barris, 60, offers more than just another account of the great military battles.
“I realized 30 years ago or more, ‘Hey these guys are around. I don’t have to sit and sift through the details of the war diaries and dry history books,’” he said. “I can go out there and find the history myself.”
And he did, hundreds of times.
In Breaking the Silence, Barris reveals the emotional tales that make Canada’s veterans relatable to those who can’t imagine the realities of war. Through years of research and involvement with veterans’ affairs, Barris earned the trust of people who never even opened up to their own families.
“There was always the fear on their part that they might break down or become very emotional, and they didn’t want to appear vulnerable in front of their loved ones,” he said.
As a result, the book offers the memories of veterans such as Charley Fox, a flight instructor and Spitfire pilot during WWII who became a great friend and supporter of Barris. Fox was responsible for severely injuring the German general Erwin Rommel, known as the “Desert Fox,” putting the general out of commission in 1944. It wasn’t until several decades later – years after Barris befriended Fox in 1990 – that he even admitted to this wartime achievement.
“(Veterans) don’t brag. It’s kind of like there’s this veneer of being Canadian, which is sort of plain, normal and not terribly exciting-looking,” Barris said. “But underneath is this incredible spirit, this unbelievable tenacity and courage to do these things. All you have to do is peel back the veneer a little bit and it starts to reveal itself.”
As Barris himself says, he went to great pains to include himself in this book. Threaded in between the memories of disappearing veterans are stories of how this work has affected his own life – including an account of how he found out about the bravery of his own father, Alex Barris, who served as a medic for the U.S. Army during WWII.
Like many war vets, Alex Barris stuck to “just the war stories he knew would leave me laughing” when a young Ted asked about his war experience. It wasn’t until after his father’s death in 2004 that Ted Barris found out that his father, too, had gone beyond the call of duty. One day, while sifting through his father’s old papers, his mother came across a typewritten citation commending his father for retrieving four soldiers who were trapped in mine-infested woods.
“His total disregard for personal safety and his continual service… above the call of his particular duties are in keeping with the highest of army traditions,” the document read.
Until 1999, when Barris began teaching at Centennial’s CCC, the college didn’t hold Remembrance Day ceremonies at all. In his book, Barris recalls how he was told “except for a few words of explanation and an ad lib silence in those lecture rooms where instructors felt it necessary, Nov. 11 was just another day.” For young college students, it would be “as relevant as the history of the Roman Empire.”
By the next school year, Barris had convinced the college not only to observe a moment of silence, but also to attend a ceremony to show students the real faces behind the war. On Nov. 11, 2000, the CCC hosted veterans who had carried out a bombing raid to destroy industrial dams in Nazi Germany. The ceremony closed with a live trumpeter from a local high school band, and afterwards, students and vets gathered in the cafeteria for casual conversation.
This November, Barris plans to invite veterans from WWII to commemorate the 65th anniversary of D-Day. In a way, he says, he’s “doing the stereotypical thing” by bringing veterans in to be part of a Remembrance Day ceremony.
“But what I’ve done every year is I’ve taken away the veneer and allowed these men and women who come into the college to get to meet you and vice versa,” he said. “You get to realize they’re real people, and that’s part of the process of breaking down the silence.”
For him, this has been a 30-year process of embedding himself in the lives and traditions of a quickly declining population of Canadian veterans. With Breaking the Silence, he proves that by focusing on the people rather than just the battles, a dying history can be brought back to life.
