Valour Road: How Three Men from the Same Street Earned the Victoria Cross in WWI [Family Reads]

Why we chose John Nadler’s Valour Road

Mom and I didn’t have any particular ideas for this month. So, I asked Mom to pick fiction or non-fiction and then we browsed my to-read-fiction shelf on Goodreads. We landed on Valour Road because it’s about local history. Mom remembered hearing about the Pine Street boys from a Heritage Minute (embedded below) that aired shortly before I was born. It surprised me that Valour Road only had 20 ratings on Goodreads, so maybe our discussion boosts its profile a tad.

The First World War lasted for four years and three months. And when it ended on November 11, 1918, the people of Pine Street, a sleepy avenue on the outskirts of Winnipeg, came to a startling realization. During the course of the conflict, young Leo Clarke, Robert Shankland, and Fred Hall, all from their street, had each received the Victoria Cross, the highest award for bravery at that time. Such a phenomenon has never been repeated anywhere in the former British empire.

Accessing original documents in his research—such as the wartime diary of Leo’s brother, Charlie, official war records, and general history—author John Nadler constructs a story of the three heroic soldiers, their families, and the enormous impact of WWI on a young Canada. This historic concurrence was so meaningful that a statue was erected in Winnipeg in tribute to these three ordinary soldiers, and their street was renamed Valour Road in their honour.

Our Discussion

Local History

Mom rates Valour Road ★★★½ stars (“enjoyable, worth your time”). I rate it ★★★ stars (“good, maybe borrow from the library “). Mom would recommend it to readers interested in Winnipeg. I would narrow that to readers interested in Winnipeg history and/or WWI.

Reading a book about local history gave Mom the opportunity for a little field trip. She describes driving down Portage Avenue (the main east-west thoroughfare in Winnipeg) and approaching Valour Road. The street was thus named in 1925. A post in the median features an outline of a solider with a distinctive street sign naming Valour Road. When you drive past that place, it might click in that you’re coming up to a spot that has some significance in local history, and you might like to learn what that is. Mom snapped these photos of the memorial at Valour and Sargeant.

• 

• 

• 

Learning Their Stories

We both knew the history behind Valour Road in the most general terms. Three young men living on the same street in Winnipeg were awarded the Victoria Cross during WWI. But we never heard much about why they earned that award. It was in a way satisfying to finally learn the story behind their actions. Leo’s story was both stunning and heartbreaking, and reading about Shankland’s role at Passchendale was eye-opening. Neither Mom nor I could imagine demonstrating the selflessness that Hall did.

The nature of what the three men went through doesn’t neatly lend itself to the narrative structure of a book. The book is mostly about brothers Charlie and Leo Clarke because they spent the most time in the war and were both Bombers, and Charlie survived to write about it. There was a lot more to share about their stories than just the action that resulted in Leo being awarded. Poor Fred Hall receives the least attention because his life was cut so short. Even Robert Shankland’s story received just a few chapters. Nadler (the author) had to piece so much information together in order to create an accurate and informed narrative that follows a chronological timeline.

A Different Time

Something that struck Mom while reading through Valour Road was thinking about the ages of these young men, and what they were doing. Charlie was in the war for four years; when he came out, he was only 23. The level of responsibility expected of such young people, in the worst of circumstances. It’s hard to imagine that any 20 year old today would be able to manage it. But then we remember that Shankland was a dairy clerk, and we might have had the same thought about him a hundred years ago: that he would never be able to manage it. And yet somehow, some of them did. As well, the context of when men enlisted to serve during WWI completely differs from today. They would have had a different attitdue toward such a war. For example, many of the Canadians who enlisted were essentially still Brits.

Final Thoughts

While this isn’t the easiest historical narrative non-fiction to read, we are glad to have read it and learnt a lot about the events that led to the creation of Valour Road. Have you read any books about war that connect to your hometown? Is there a piece of your local history that you’d like to learn more about?