If you look at footage of the Newfoundland Regiment, you see they are at rest and giddy and being silly with one another. Silliness is the antidote to trench warfare.
I've never in my life categorized a year of my life as good or bad. I just think I'm living a good life, warts and all.
We found letters at the house we bought from a sailor to his wife who lived in the house. He went down to the Caribbean on this trader vessel, bringing down salted fish. There would be handwritten letters, but also telegrams, saying which ports he was in. And he'd be gone for three months. That was just the way it is.
The fantastic thing about the memorial to the Newfoundland Regiment at Beaumont-Hamel is that it's one of the rare examples where they've preserved a battlefield more or less as it was. You can see all the trenches, where the British were, where the Germans lined up.
Before Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949, there was the same sort of talk of young men sacrificing their lives so that a country might grow - that somehow it had been a great nation-building success for Newfoundland.
I approached writing a story for the CBC Literary Awards as a mercenary venture - $5,000 for one story, not bad. Now, how do you win it? Jurors are wading through skyscrapers of paper, looking for one story that stands out.
