What’s in a monument?

by Lesley Craig

Weighing in at 43 tonnes of granite-like monzonite and measuring just over five metres high, the All Sappers’ Memorial is a solid testament to CFB Chilliwack’s 53-year history. Camp Chilliwack was born out of a muddy British Columbia farm in 1942. The farmhouse became headquarters, the barn a quartermaster store and temporary kitchen, and the chicken coop the company orderly room. Being home to the Royal Canadian Engineers, it didn’t stay that way for long.

When the base closed in 1995, it was a self-contained community offering everything from chapels to curling rinks. When a judge told teenager Jim Harris he’d better get his act together and join the Army, he signed up to be a sapper apprentice. Arriving at the base in 1961, he found the home and discipline the judge had hoped he would.

“My mother died when I was only five and my father died when I was 12, so I didn’t really have much stability in my life,” says Warrant Officer (Ret) Harris. “Then, when I joined the military, I got all of that. I got family and security and everything a 16-year-old could possibly need, especially discipline.”

During his 34 years as a military engineer, he deployed to 28 countries. He served 12 years in Germany during the Cold War, as camp sergeant major at Canada Dry One in Qatar during the Gulf War, and in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia during the conflict in the Balkans.

After his retirement, SM Harris returned home to Chilliwack. He is president of the CFB Chilliwack Historical Society and, recently, has been busy making sure that the All Sappers’ Memorial refurbishment is done just right. The memorial sits beside Veder Crossing’s main intersection. It was built at the end of the Second World War, four years after Camp Chilliwack was established.

In 2003, Veder Crossing city planners decided the intersection needed a right-turn lane. It would encroach on the grounds surrounding the memorial, and SM Harris found this unacceptable.

“The one and only Victoria Cross winner from the Royal Canadian Engineers [Lieutenant-Colonel Coulson Norman Mitchell] is the guy who designed it,” SM Harris says. “It was his leadership; he caused it to be designed, he caused it to be built and that site is sacred.” Moreover, the ashes of eight sappers have been spread on the grounds surrounding the memorial and nobody wanted to see those grounds disturbed.

SM Harris formed a committee with other retired sappers and approached Canada Lands Corporation (CLC), the company responsible for redeveloping the former CFB Chilliwack lands. SM Harris handed CLC a 12-item list of concerns. CLC, he says, has met or surpassed every item on the list.

Today, the monument, sandblasted clean, glows brightly under new fibre optic lighting. The park is wheel-chair accessible and the new concrete and paving stone pathways are suitable for marching. The circle of grass surrounding the obelisk has been raised.

“I can’t say enough about the guys who did the work,” SM Harris says. “They treated the site with reverence and respect, and every single item they did there was done to perfection.”

Several weeks after the refurbishment was completed, another family gathered in the park and spread the ashes of a loved one at the base of the monument.

View original article on the National Defence and the Canadian Forces website.