Memorialising those we lost at Beaumont Hamel

It’s been almost a century since hundreds of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians were killed in the tragic battle at Beaumont Hamel on July 1, 1916. But the enormous loss from a time we were our own country still remains in people’s hearts on what is otherwise celebrated as Canada Day countrywide.

By Justin Brake ● News ● July 2, 2013 July 15, 2022

Memorial Day, July 1, 2013, Bowring Park, St. John's. Photo by Justin Brake.

As people across the country celebrated Canada Day Monday, many in Newfoundland and Labrador observed Memorial Day and commemorated the hundreds of lives lost during World War I at Beaumont Hamel, France on July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

At one of the many ceremonies held province-wide, about 100 people gathered beneath the Caribou Monument at Bowring Park in St. John’s Monday afternoon. In front of the Beaumont Hamel Memorial plaques – replicas of those in France, which list the names of 820 soldiers, sailors and seamen from Newfoundland and Labrador who died in the Great War and have no known graves – veterans and others marked the somber occasion with words of remembrance and a singing of Ode to Newfoundland.

Memorial Day, July 1, 2013 – Bowring Park, St. John’s

Author

Justin Brake

Justin Brake (settler, he/him) is a reporter and editor at The Independent, a role in which he previously served from 2012 to 2017. In recent years, he has worked as a contributing editor at The Breach and as a reporter and executive producer with APTN News. In 2017, Justin was criminally charged for reporting from the Indigenous-led occupation of Muskrat Falls. Those charges were dropped following a landmark 2019 ruling from Newfoundland and Labrador’s Court of Appeal that affirmed journalists’ special role in covering Indigenous protest and established a legal precedent prohibiting the arbitrary use of court injunctions against journalists. Justin was born in Gander and raised in Saskatchewan and Ontario. He returned home in 2007 to study at Memorial University and now lives with his partner and children in Benoit’s Cove, Bay of Islands.

Memorial Day, July 1, 2013 – Bowring Park, St. John’s

Author

Justin Brake

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