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Follow on Google News | Gabriola, BC Playwright Launches Play about Aboriginal WWI Hero“Meticulously researched, this play brings Alex Decoteau—the man, his life, his death—before us. A true warrior, who was ultimately sacrificed on the altar of futile tactics.”—Major (Retired) David Haas, CD, RMC
By: Fictive Press Published by Fictive Press (http://fictivepress.com/) Running: the Alex Decoteau Story, a one-act play for six actors, tells the sad but uplifting tale of a true Cree hero. In 1911, in Edmonton, Decoteau became Canada’s first aboriginal police officer, famous for chasing down and ticketing speeding vehicles on foot. A champion runner and popular figure, Decoteau raced for Canada at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. He fought for Canada in World War I and was killed, in 1917, while running a message at the Battle of Passchendaele. He was only 29 years old. As we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Great War, Major (Retired) David Haas, CD, RMC, who wrote the book’s forward, explains the play’s significance in his review: “The title of this play has a double meaning. Alex Decoteau was not only a champion foot racer, he served in the army as a regimental runner. In an era before radio existed for infantry battalion communications, and with telephone lines being susceptible to being cut or tapped into, messages between the levels of command were carried by hand—the duty of a soldier called a ‘runner.’ This was hazardous duty in the extreme, and performing it is how Alex Decoteau died. “He fell nearly a hundred years ago, in the cauldron of the Battle of Passchendaele, the worst of Field Marshal Haig’s repeated failing offensives along the Western Front in Belgium and France. He lies nearby, at the Passchendaele New British Cemetery which contains about 2,101 graves and commemorations from the late 1917 fighting in the area. …. “At the time of his enlistment on April 24, 1916, at age 28, Alex Decoteau was already a man of public accomplishment: “The play ends with Canadian Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden’s blunt threat to his British counterpart David Lloyd George, to withhold Canadian troops if there was any repetition of the futile butchery of Passchendaele. The passage is quoted from Borden’s nephew, who witnessed the conversation, and—as a prominent Toronto lawyer years later—repeated it. That battle featured the bloodiest 24 hours in the history of the 49th Battalion (Edmonton Regiment) and its successor The Loyal Edmonton Regiment. It was then that Alex Decoteau died. This book will tell you how that happened, and what manner of man he was.” Fictive Press was launched in 2011 by Morri Mostow as a division of BizNet Communications, a corporate and marketing communications firm that she and her husband, Doug Long, have been running since the early 1980s, first in Quebec and, since 2005, on Gabriola Island. Running: The Alex Decoteau Story is Fictive Press’s seventh title. Fictive Press’s first title (published in 2012), The Fool Who Invented Kissing (http://www.fictivepress.com/ To arrange an interview with Charlotte Cameron, to download a review copy of any Fictive Press title, or for more information, contact: End
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