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I’ve just had an eerie experience of life imitating art, or perhaps a better description would be art actually capturing life.  The day after I finished reading Joseph Boyden’s remarkable first novel, Three Day Road, about the experiences of a Cree infantry soldier and sniper in World War I, I had occasion to listen to an interview I conducted in Kelowna , BC with Gunner John Marchand, a member of the  Okanagan First Nation who served on the front lines of Europe with artillery and infantry for five years during World War II. Mr. Boyden’s horrifying and bloody depictions of trench warfare were still in sharp focus in my mind as Mr. Marchand recalled his own battles in perfect, chilling detail.  Sixty-five years have done little to blunt the memory for Mr. Marchand as he recalled crossing a river under heavy fire, taking cover from the shelling, and then months later, watching his friend Burnside, with whom he’d been through the entire war, get killed for the mistake of standing up.  “This would be after the new year,” Mr. Marchand recalls.  “January [1945] nice sunny day, he stands up in his fox hole, he was about six feet, he stands up like that, 10 or 12 seconds. Sniper got him.”  

There were other similarities in the two stories – Joseph Boyden’s novel and John Marchand’s real-life memories, including  the depiction of equal treatment by non-Aboriginal comrades on the front lines - 
(“Everybody was on par,” Mr. Marchand told me , “especially when you get into the front lines)- as the racial discrimination continued uninterrupted back home.

Three Day Road is an astounding story – beautiful and sad, while Mr. Marchand’s story is so powerful because it’s raw, meticulously told and true. Experiencing them both so close together increased the impact of each individually.  Truly amazing.


Marchand, 1942


Marchand, October 2009