Remembering

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  By Guest Blogger Doug Rowat

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For roughly the past decade, my early November posts here have probably included something related to market outlook or, maybe, personal finance. Last year, of all things, I discussed pipelines. No doubt I thought all of these subjects were important at the time.

But importance is relative.

I was emphatically reminded of this when I recently sorted through some set-aside documents from my father’s estate.

In the past, I vaguely understood that two of my great uncles served in World War I. But I now know much more.

My great uncle Duke Rowat was a 1st Lieutenant in a Canadian machine gun company serving overseas in France from August 1916 until the late summer of 1918. He wrote a long letter to my grandfather in 1961 that detailed many of his experiences during the war. Much of it reads like a memoir.

Not often, but occasionally, it’s even humorous. Duke, for instance, who later became an architect, liked to sketch the buildings in France. But appearing to survey buildings was not something that the military police took kindly to six miles from the front lines. Once, explaining to a military police captain, who had followed him for two hours, the finer design-points of French churches was all that spared my great uncle from arrest.

However, his downtime belied the incredible danger that he and his fellow soldiers were constantly exposed to. Duke was eventually wounded:

One day in November 1916 when in a support line in the vicinity of the desolated hamlet of Vlamertinghe an enemy shell caved in the trench. Another man and myself were in the affected bay. A chunk of iron the size of a baby’s fist went into the other fellow’s back. I was lucky. I got a small splinter in my stomach.

After recovering in England, my great uncle returned to his unit and, ultimately, fought the following year at Vimy Ridge. For those not aware, and every Canadian should be, Vimy Ridge was a tactically important escarpment in Arras that had been under German control since 1914.

Many allied units had tried, unsuccessfully, to capture it. Enter four Canadian divisions on April 9th, 1917. Duke describes the assault as vividly as any war historian could:

This was a surprise offensive—there was no preliminary bombardment—but the heaviest concentration of artillery assembled up to that time on the Western Front supported the battle assault. In this attack, although the normal tactical use of the heavy machine guns was to provide covering fire, some of the units advanced with the first infantry wave.

At zero hour, 5:30 a.m., we went ‘over the top’. At the same moment the furies of hell were loosed: a pulsating red glow suffused the heavens, forked flame spat from the entire western horizon and an eerie phospherescent light from star shells exposed the tattered land; the skies thundered with the reverberations of the artillery and the air pierced by a thousand shells screamed. It was an inferno. Monstrous—unreal.

The Canadians, of course, were successful in capturing Vimy, but at a cost of nearly 3,600 soldiers’ lives. Fortunately, my great uncle Duke survived the assault, and I was actually able to meet him decades later at his home in Boston when I was a small child. That piece of shrapnel, by the way, remained lodged near his spine his entire life.

My great uncle Robert “Robin” Rowat, Duke’s older brother, wasn’t so lucky. Robin enlisted in 1916 in a Canadian cyclist division, but eventually became a 2nd Lieutenant and pilot, joining the Royal Flying Corps, 8th Squadron, in 1917. Robin was tasked with making reconnaissance flights over the French countryside but, needless to say, those early aircraft offered nothing like the safety and integrity of today’s planes, or even the planes of World War II. It was when returning from one of these flights on September 16th, 1917 that, according to Duke, “a gust of wind caused his plane to sideslip” and ultimately crash, killing him instantly. He was 25. Below is my great uncle Robin with his fellow pilots (he’s the one up top with his hand resting on the plane).

Source: Personal collection of Doug Rowat

In case we need to be reminded of what real sacrifice looks like. This is it.

I have the good fortune to hammer away at my keyboard writing about one financial topic or another because of the incredible price that my great uncles—and the thousands of other men and women who serve our country—paid.

How do we repay such a debt for our freedoms? Remembering their sacrifices this Wednesday morning is an excellent start.

Doug Rowat, FCSI® is Portfolio Manager with Turner Investments and Senior Investment Advisor, Private Client Group, Raymond James Ltd

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About the picture: A detail, ‘Sacrifice and Torch’, from Canada’s most significant overseas war monument, at Vimy. Located on Hill 145 in Pas-de-Calais, France, it stands on 248 acres of preserved battlefield terrain that the French government granted to Canada “freely and for all time” in 1922. The memorial marks the site of the historic April 9–12, 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge—a pivotal moment often credited as a turning point for Canadian nationhood—and honors all Canadians who served in the First World War. Over 66,000 Canadians and Newfoundlanders lost their lives in this war.

Source: https://www.greaterfool.ca/2026/11/07/remembering/