www.ns.legion.ca 85 Wallace received an invitation from the minister of veterans affairs in Ottawa to attend the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge celebrations in France in 1967. He was pleased to attend, displaying the medal that was awarded for service on the front. Wallace returned to Centreville, Kings County, where he made a home with his wife, Mabel, and where they raised a family of eight children. I am the only one of their five sons who did not serve in the military. Wallace experienced unfair treatment because he was a war veteran, referred to as a ‘return man’. He was refused employment because of a policy, in effect, not to hire return men because they were not physically able to do a proper day’s work. Many in the community were unsympathetic concerning his symptoms of shellshock. He outlived Mabel by 17 years. He and I lived together in his home in Centreville until the last three years of his life, when he lived at Camp Hill Veterans Hospital in Halifax. He had two strokes that occurred about a year apart and left him in a state of dementia that progressed to where he was not speaking. He was in this condition when I went to visit him on Remembrance Day, 1982. The nurse on his ward suggested I should take him downstairs where Remembrance Day celebrations were taking place. We got off the elevator downstairs, with Dad in his wheelchair, and he appeared to be enjoying the celebrations. It was the Black Watch piper, who entered the room wearing his kilt and full attire, that brought the terrible memories of the war back to him. Although Wallace had not spoken for several months, he broke down and kept repeating several times, “I remember, I remember”. I took him back upstairs where the sounds of the bagpipes could not be heard to remind him of his terrible experiences. It was an upsetting experience for me to realize that hearing the sound of the bagpipe in his weakened condition — a sound that would have been familiar to him when he was in the trenches — released the horrid wartime memories he had tried so hard to forget. Wallace and Mabel struggled to raise a family of eight children. Wallace’s plans to further his studies were disrupted by the war and he was not able to return to Acadia, mostly because of his nerve problem from shellshock. On three occasions between the early 1920s and early 1930s, he was admitted to Ste. Anne’s Hospital in Ste.-Anne-deBellevue, Quebec, for treatment relating to shell shock. Wallace adjusted to cope with his disabilities and was an upstanding resident of Centreville. He was involved with the Baptist Church, where he served in various capacities, and after serving as a deacon he was appointed honorary deacon. He worked very hard to make ends meet. The $10 pension he received from the Canadian Department of Veterans Affairs, because of his wounds, paid the mortgage payment on our family farm. Mabel, my mother, died Aug. 29, 1967, age 66, and Wallace, my father, died Feb. 17, 1984, age 93. They are buried in a family plot at Lakeview Cemetery in Billtown, Kings County, Nova Scotia. Mack (Malcom) Frail lives with his wife Sheila in Centreville, Kings County, where he operated Frail’s Valley Nursery and Garden Centre for 50 years before retiring in 2010. A local historian, he is the author of The History of Centreville Kings County and writes a column, Story From the Family Farm, for his community paper.
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