Islander 'honoured' to write tributes for Vimy 100 celebrations

An Islander played a major role in the Vimy 100 celebrations in France on Sunday.

Kent Stetson, a Governor General Award-winning playwright and author and also a member of the Order of Canada, wrote The Torch: A Suite of Elegies to Gratitude and Compassion, a series of 16 touching monologues that was read during the service.

"It was a great honour to have been asked to write these tributes to the courage and compassion of the human spirit," he said on CBC's Mainstreet P.E.I.

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About 25,000 people attended the ceremony at Canadian National Vimy Memorial in northern France. Stetson said the experience was "more than one could have imagined."

It was a great honour to have been asked to write these tributes to the courage and compassion of the human spirit.- Kent Stetson

"It makes one believe there is a world of hope available if we all work together in the proper way," he said.

Stetson said he drew inspiration for the monologues from his grandfather, who fought in the First World War.

"The horror of what happened to them, that they saw, what they experienced and, in fact, what they did, they brought that home with them and it filters down through generations," he said.

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