Saskatoon Express: Grandfather’s war-time letters inspire playwright

This article was first published in the Oct. 29, 2018, edition of the Saskatoon Express.

By Shannon Boklaschuk

You could say that Saskatonian Joshua Ramsden is a triple threat: he’s a playwright, a director and an actor.

Ramsden will showcase all of those theatre skills next month when he stages his play, A Soldier’s War, as part of Live Five Independent Theatre’s 15^th season. Produced by Strikes Twice Productions, A Soldier’s War follows the journey of five Canadian soldiers during the Second World War. Ramsden is also directing the production, as well as acting alongside Torien Cafferata, Kyle Kuchirka, Donny Ready and Devin Wesnoski.

Ramsden’s play was inspired by the war-time letters written by his grandfather. He describes the process of writing the show as “terrifying,” and he hopes that he honours his grandfather with the production.

“He died before I got the letters, so there was always this kind of air of making sure I wasn’t doing a disservice to him, and that I was serving some of the conversations and questions that he and I had had before he passed away,” said Ramsden.

Ramsden lived with his grandfather and grandmother in Calgary about a year before his grandfather died in 2008. He believes it was one of the best decisions he’s ever made, because he really got to know them as people.

“It’s interesting, because I had never lived in the same city as them,” said Ramsden. “And so I always kind of had that relationship where I’d see them at Christmas and I’d see them for a week or so in the summer. But to actually sort of see them morning to night – you know, days and days – have supper with them, breakfast with them, you get to see them as human beings as opposed to these people that you kind of put on a pedestal. So you see sort of the heartache and the pain and the joy and the laughter in a different way. It truly is one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life.”

Ramsden was born and raised in Saskatoon and attended Evan Hardy Collegiate. He then studied at the University of Saskatchewan, earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree through the drama department in the College of Arts and Science in 2011. He later attended the Globe Theatre Conservatory in 2014.

Ramsden said A Soldier’s War is now in its third iteration. In 2017, the show went on a Western Canadian tour, picking up rave reviews along the way. For example, A Soldier’s War claimed the Best of Fest prize at Calgary’s Fringe Festival, while CBC Manitoba referred to it as “worth the standing ovation.” Meanwhile, the Winnipeg Free Press hailed the play as “haunting, even unforgettable,” while Edmonton’s Vue Weekly called it “nothing short of spectacular,” adding that it “lives up to the hype.”

Ramsden said his grandfather was in his early 20s when he enlisted in the army, and the letters he sent home were to his parents and younger siblings. Ramsden said his grandfather didn’t talk a lot about the war when he lived with him in Calgary, so A Soldier’s War is Ramsden’s attempt to “colour in some of the borders.”

“He didn’t talk about it a lot when I lived with him; he spent a lot of time in bed at that point of his life,” said Ramsden.

“He kind of beckoned me into his room and he’d be sitting out with little leaflets or – I don’t want to say memorabilia – but pieces of his past. He would sort of talk about a person or two and where they were when they passed away, or his proximity to them. (There was) not a lot of tragic details; mostly, his stories were that of kind of the funny ones – like he never played crib anymore after the army, because he played it so much while he was over there. He talked about the drinking – when they could – and sort of the fun relationships playing hockey and playing baseball and stuff while he was in Europe. But a lot of the harder conversations were more facts and less detail.”

When Ramsden received his grandfather’s letters, he decided to put them into chronological order before reading them. What struck Ramsden was that the man at the end of the letters was the person he knew as his grandfather, but “the person who initially wrote the letters was a human being I’d never met,” Ramsden said.

“He didn’t speak a lot about the details (of the) things that were happening, so this show was a question of, ‘What must have taken place to go from that guy I didn’t know, to the person I knew as my grandpa?’ That’s what this story is about, is looking at the consequences of war and the experiences that people go through and how traumatic events can impact people in a different way. War doesn’t affect everyone in the same way. If it did, it would be easier to understand.”

A Soldier’s War runs from Nov. 1 – 4 and from Nov. 8 – 10 at The Refinery, located at 609 Dufferin Ave. Tickets are $25 for adults and $22 for students and seniors, and can be purchased by calling 306-653-5191 or by going online to livefive.ca.

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