A Producer's
Reflection on His Film:
Shooters & the 60th Anniversary of the End of WWII
If I may offer an observation about this 60th anniversary. I would hold that one theme pertinent to this anniversary is that of "memory." It is as important to recognize "that" we remember as it is "what" we remember.
It strikes me that this anniversary will be one of the last major anniversaries with a fair number of surviving veterans of WWII. Once these chaps are gone, how will Canadians remember? (Even two of my chaps are dead: Messers. Al Calder and Lew Weekes.)
It may be that some graduate work I'm doing now about "ritual memory" is coming to play here but so be it. The Canadian public and people everywhere perceive life's experiences in a constant, unending, stream of memory checks. We all wade through life in waters of constantly updated, renewed or newly formed memory. We can have strong memories excited by weak stimuli. We can have weak memories excited by strong stimuli. We can have strong memories excited by strong stimuli. Much of life can simply pass us by without seeming to register in our memory. All these possibilities are how we survive and live in the world.
When the direct connection to the events of WWII, which are the veterans whom we know, e.g., for me: my dad and CFPU and other vets that I know personally, is finally gone with their deaths, then the strong stimuli to that event are gone. It was this phenomenon that got me off my duff to at least reach the four vets that I did. Two died before I got to them: Ken Bell and Bill Grant.
An historic event is coming for the post war generation like myself. Living histories are about to disappear, forever lost as living history. Our children and grandchildren will never have the memory quality that we have had, as is natural. Our own ability to remember is going to change dramatically as the last WWII vets cease to speak.
If the events of WWII are significant - the association of Canadian Newspaper Editors (sic), albeit with a vested interest, have declared D-Day and the like as the greatest stories of the last century, so there may be credence - then how we, as a nation, "see and do" stuff to take the place of the living stimuli of our veterans is of the utmost significance. It is significant politically, socially and even down to our families.
This passing of corporate memory has always been a human phenomenon but this time it's different from all other times. The CFPU chaps did something now commonplace but then radically different. They became the disseminating eyes and ears of the Canadian public. They "did and saw" stuff that allowed us to witness war in graphic detail. They provided the grist for whatever it is that Canada will "see and do" to provide for its common memory of those events. They did so by virtue of the quality and quantity of their output and by our willingness as a public to flock to cinemas to view their work or to review it repackaged as television.
As such, their contribution to Canadian society almost matches the deeds of its armed forces in the war, who both together allowed us freedom and the ability to see that freedom unfold; to etch it into our memories as a society in a way that had an impact unrepeated in the Canadian forces until 1981 with the Gulf War and bypassing by far the efforts to capture the images of WWI.
An approach to the 60th anniversary of the end of the war should include a look at how we remember and an examination of memory itself, that we remember not just what we remember. This show plays a part in the stuff of remembance.
- James O'Regan, May 1, 2005