Canada’s Dream Shall Be of Them: Canadian Epitaphs of the Great War

More than sixty thousand Canadian soldiers died in World War I and were buried on battlefields far from their homes. To mark their graves, loved ones added epitaphs, which, a century later, remain heart-wrenching reminders of powerful grief and the search for consolation.

This book reproduces over five hundred of those epitaphs, alongside stunning photographs of the battlefield today, their scars covered by grass and trees, but nonetheless still there. “Our dear Daddy and our hero," reads one epitaph. “Baby of the family. Mother still anxious for his return," reads another. As we turn the pages, the losses of World War I, cutting across all layers of society, come closer to us in time—we see again these dead and their grieving families as people like us, with hopes, dreams, ambitions, and loves devastated by war.