40-min forum: A life lived in remembrance

Think of it - Cecil Owen, third rector of Christ Church (1903-1918), signing on as a wartime army chaplain in 1915 at the indisputable middle age of 51.

He was there at the battlefield funeral of his 22-year-old soldier son, Harold, in Flanders on January 31, 1916; the next day he led four funerals for men from his own battalion.

He gave the dedication at the unveiling of Vancouver’s Victory Square Cenotaph on April 27, 1924, just one event in his long post-war life of remembering those years and those men, in public and in private.

Join CCC parishioner and writer, Anne Fletcher, at a 40-Minute Forum on Nov. 3 to talk about the way war echoes down the generations of our own families, and how we remember and how we would want to be remembered. 

Anne will look at Cecil Owen’s story and the stories of three Christ Church parishioners memorialized on the church’s walls following their Great War deaths – Harold Owen himself in the soldier window on the east wall, Private Norman Hughes to the left in the St. Andrew window, and Lieutenant-Colonel William Hart-McHarg on a plaque in the military alcove.

Those soldiers are at the core of her play, Duty Calls - Men of Christ Church go to War, to be performed Sunday, Nov. 10, 4 p.m. at the Cathedral.

International theatre artist, Jack Paterson, will direct, and Rupert Lang, the Cathedral’s director of music, will lead from piano and organ as the audience is invited to join in, singing hymns once sung at those Great War funerals. 

Admission by donation.