November 11, 2023

JOHN WILLIAM WATSON. 1897-1918

One hundred and five years ago, my Grandfather’s younger brother,  John William Watson, was killed in action on the 3rd of September, 1918, just 2 months before that horrific war ended. He was 21 years old. He was born in 1897.

It has always bothered me that when we refer to soldiers that have died, that the words “Lest we forget” are always stated and yet for the most part, we all forget as time marches on.

John Watson was a private with the 1st Battalion Canadian Machine Gun Corp. He died during the battle in the trenches at Hendecourt-Les Cagnicourt in France. He is buried there today in the British Dominion Cemetery in Hendecourt-Les-Cagnicourt, never to return to Prince Edward Island where he was born and spent most of his short life.

In a war that made little sense, he died in the mud for one reason – the glory of the British Empire, an empire that is no more. I often wonder what went through his head while crouching behind a machine gun in those nightmarish trenches. Did he see much of France before he died? Did he meet a girl? Did he have many happy moments? Was he home sick for the Maritimes?

His younger brother Paul Thomas Watson was born in 1916 just two years before John died. He died at the age of 33 in 1949 from wounds suffered while serving in the Merchant Navy in WWII. He died the year before I was born, which is why my name is Paul Watson after my father’s uncle.

I never knew either of them. but they were both family and they both died for Canada. 

As much as I abhor war, I do reflect on the sacrifices of my ancestors. My mother’s father who was an officer in the Boer War. My father who served in Korea. My ancestors on both the British and the French sides that fought or died in the War of 1759 at Quebec. My indigenous and Acadian French ancestors who resisted the tyranny and deportations by the British in Acadia in the 18th Century. My Scottish ancestors that fought British tyranny. 

It should never be forgotten that war is insanity. It is legalized murder that rarely benefits those who participate in the battle. Some wars are unavoidable, like the war against the Nazi’s and Imperial Japan, but most wars are waged to benefit corporations and special interests.

I am also a veteran, but of a confrontation that the establishment will never recognize. I served with the American Indian Movement in 1973 to defend the Fort Laramie Treaty. We were shot at, there were casualties and we stood for justice although we were defeated by the overwhelming might of the U.S. Government, but I learned a very important lesson from that conflict.

Although we were surrounded, the odds were against us and we had no hope of winning, we were there because as AIM leader Russell Means put it very clearly at the time.

“We’re not concerned about the odds against us. We’re not concerned about winning or losing. We are here because it is the right place to be, the right thing to do and the right time to do it. We focus on the present because it is what we do in the present that defines what the future will be.“

Today with the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, we are fighting a war against poachers and we are doing so using a strategy I developed in 1977 that I call “aggressive non-violence” and I am proud of the fact that after 45 years we have never caused a single injury to a single person. But most importantly we have saved lives, thousands of lives.