Synopsis
The six-hour, six-part documentary series, “For King and Empire”, is based on the “For King and Empire” books by author and publisher Norm Christie. In the series, narrated by actor and playwright R. H. Thomson, Norm Christie takes us to the battlefields, cemeteries, and monuments of Belgium and France, on a quest to find what remains of the Canadian soldiers who fought “For King and Empire” in the Great War of 1914-1918. Accompanying the men into battle, we discover how the naïve, amateur soldiers of 1914 became, by 1918, perhaps the most feared, efficient, and deadly Allied Corps on the Western Front – the “Canadian Corps”. Telling the story in their own words, Canadian soldiers take us into the heart of the fighting. We are there, with Private Harold Peat and Canon Frederick Scott, during the first mass poisoned gas attack in history, at Ypres in Belgium in 1915. We follow Private Donald Fraser during the first tank attack ever, at the Battle of the Somme, in 1916. We accompany Corporal Victor Wheeler during the spectacular Canadian assault on Vimy Ridge in April 1917. We are beside Private Will Bird during the muddy suicide-like attacks on Passchendaele Ridge in the fall of 1917. And during the “Last 100 Days” we are along side John Harold Becker, Captain James Pedley, Canon Scott, and Will Bird, when, in months of virtually non-stop fighting, at the battles of Amiens, Arras, the Canal du Nord, Cambrai, and Mons, the Canadian Corps becomes known as “the spearhead of victory”. And, after the Armistice of November 11, 1918, we see how the War left its scars in the minds of men and in the fields of Belgium and France. Bones still push up to the surface of farmers’ fields; each year live shells from 80 years ago still kill. Following Canon Scott and Will Bird, we learn how, out of the bitterness and chaos left by the war came the Second World War, and how the sons of the men who fought in 1914-1918 had to come to the old battlefields to fight where their fathers fought almost thirty years before.


Prizes and Awards
Not specified