How one man helped build a nation at Vimy Ridge

It’s a long story that I’ve studied and written about since I, myself, was in my early 20s.

George, who died in 1934, deserves a party, so a bunch of his descendants, civic officials, First Nations and Scottish heritage folks are getting together to make some speeches and unveil a plaque at the museum.

On April 9, 1917, Pvt. McLean and his fellow soldiers from the 54th Kootenay Battalion crawled out of their trenches at Vimy and attacked Hill 145, the toughest obstacle facing the Canadian Corps.

If it’s true that Canada became a nation that day, George McLean was a nation-builder. Not to mention it was a nice change of direction from what his father had done.

When he returned from the war, he was interviewed by a newspaper reporter at the train station in Kamloops. George didn’t hold back, telling the reporter how he attacked German machine-gunners with hand grenades, killing five and capturing 19, single-handed.

The newspapers called him a hero, and they were right.

But I wonder what it must have been like in the mud of Vimy. What if that reporter had asked him about men being blown up all around him, about the friend who was with him one moment and was on the ground with his brains blown out the next. What it felt like when enemy bullets hit him in the arm. What motivated him, in his 40s, to go to war for Canada?

I wonder if he had nightmares later, after returning to the Nicola Valley to work as a ranch hand.

Here’s one of the neat things about tomorrow. George, you see, had a lot of First Nations DNA mixed in with his Scottish blood. His father was the son of Hudson’s Bay Company trader Donald McLean, and his mother was the daughter of Chief Chillihetzia of the Upper Nicola Band.

There’s a lot of European-First Nations blood throughout the lineage, and tomorrow we’re celebrating not only George’s bravery, but what he represents via his bloodlines.

There will be several shades of McLeans — folks from the Clan Maclean Heritage Trust back east and in the U.S., B.C. rellies including some from urban Kamloops and the Head of the Lake Band in Vernon and elsewhere, and Upper Nicola Band elders and dignitaries. The room will be full of Tartan kilts and bagpipes, buckskin and drums, and maybe a Métis sash or two. It’s going to be pretty cool.

The McLeans who traded furs for the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the indigenous people they found already living here, spent quite a lot of time shooting at each other.

Thankfully, that didn’t stop them from marrying, and George McLean was one of the results.

Our B.C. history is so full of bad times between indigenous peoples and colonialists, and yet we share so much in common, including the blood in our veins.

How can we not, if we work at it a little more energetically, begin sharing our vision for this land as well?

I don’t know if my ancestor George McLean ever considered such things. I like to believe, though, that he’d be pleased with what we’re going to say about him tomorrow.

by Armchair Mayor

How one man helped build a nation at Vimy Ridge

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