Leslie Miller’s First World War legacy isn’t the myth that’s being perpetuated and commercialized with so-called ‘Vimy Oaks’ saplings propagated from his woodlot.
Last year for Remembrance Day, I wrote that because of Canadian soldier Leslie Miller, oak trees once again grow on Vimy Ridge, the site of a terrible, four-day battle that began April 9, 1917, leaving 3,598 Canadians dead and more than 7,000 wounded.
When Miller returned from the First World War in spring 1919, he did plant acorns on the family farm near Scarborough. Brandt Miller recalls seeing them when he first met Uncle Les in 1953. So, what his nephews surmise is that Miller collected the acorns that fall. But they could have come from anywhere since there’s no mention of them or Miller returning to Vimy in his diaries.
The foundation has never contacted Brandt or Dan Miller about their uncle or the Vimy oaks. “Very weird!” Brandt wrote. “Time did not permit the signaller to reflect on the awful nature of his specialized work,” Victor Wheeler wrote years later of his First World War experience as a signaller with the 50th Battalion in France and Flanders. “He never knew and never dared ask what might be the end result of the orders his trained mind and skilled fingers tapped out on that little black telegraph key.”
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