Vimy Ridge, 90 years on

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Tired after a long day of teaching on Remembrance Day last November and with the rain streaming down, I returned from Mississauga along the Lakeshore. In the dark, I parked the car just past the swollen Humber River.

Setting out on foot with my flute tucked under my jacket, I found my way past intimidating chain-link fencing and crossed an abandoned, desolate and hopelessly muddy tract of land.

I must have had some playing engagement earlier that day, or maybe an important meeting downtown at the RCM, as I was conscious of my good shoes and the slippery footing in the darkness – hunched against the rain I followed my strategy of recording The Last Post in one of the tarpaulin-covered, 1920′s-era Gas Station structures temporarily up on skids there (and presumably destined for a new home?), visible for me in sillhouette against the bleak, grey sky…it hadn’t worked out that afternoon, and this was the last chance to mark the day.

Getting rained on? Worried about my good shoes? Given the sacrifice of fellow Canadians of an earlier generation, these were trifling concerns, especially given this morning’s news: six Canadians killed in Afghanistan.

This excerpt of ‘The Last Post’ holds special meaning for me, with the freedom to explore this deserted, muddied no-man’s-land. On the 90th anniversary of the pivotal 3-day battle at Vimy Ridge, this ‘post’ seems an apt way to mark such a solemn event in Canada‘s collective history.

(This piece serves as an autumnal technical exercise for my students, introducing harmonic overtones, flexibility of the lips and embouchure: simply finger a low D, C#, C or B, and, using generous air and support, pick out the notes of the natural overtone series; it is this ancient arrangement of notes, in part, that lends the distinctively evocative quality to the original bugle/trumpet voicing. For the complete score, try this link: www.anzacday.org.au/miscellaneous/sheetmusic.html).

The accompanying traffic, passing in waves on the rain-soaked Lakeshore makes an ambient, freedom-embued backdrop for this plaintive, yet ennobling melody.

(NOTE: Update as of mid-April, these quirky historic gas station structures have been safely moved to the south side of the Lakeshore, east of the Humber River; here they have found a permanent home adjacent to the cyclepath and will be used as a concession stand and/or information kiosk)