History of the Silver Cross Medal

Each year on Remembrance Day the Silver Cross medal appears in national media imagery pinned to a bereaved woman’s lapel. The Memorial Cross, as it is formally known, was made official on 1 December 1919. It was designed as a memento for the mother and widow of a sailor or soldier killed in battle. Through the years restrictions on the gender and morality of the medal’s recipients have changed, mirroring attitudinal shifts in Canadian culture at large. Through an examination of the medal’s ninety-year history, this article will outline these changes and show how the Silver Cross has continued to honour sacrifice and military service. Resume : Chaque annee, le jour du Souvenir, les medias du pays publient l’illustration de la medaille de la Croix d’argent, epinglee a la robe d’une femme endeuillee. C’est sous l’appellation de « Croix du Souvenir » que la medaille fut rendue officielle, le premier decembre 1919. Elle avait ete concue comme memento destine a la mere ou a la veuve d’un marin ou d’un soldat mort au combat. Avec les ans, les restrictions quant au genre et a la moralite des recipiendaires ont change, refletant en cela l’evolution des attitudes en matiere de culture au pays. Fruit de l’analyse des 90 annees d’histoire de la medaille, l’article mettra en lumiere ces changements et montrera comment la Croix d’argent a toujours honore le sacrifce et le service dans les forces armees. © Canadian Military History, Volume 19, Number 1, Winter 2010, pp.42-49. Each year on Remembrance Day the Silver Cross medal appears in the national media pinned to the lapel of a war-bereaved woman. When the Memorial Cross, as it is formally known, became official on 1 December 1919 it was “as a memento of personal loss and sacrifice on the part of the mother and widow of a sailor or soldier of Canada or Newfoundland who laid down his life for his country.”1 Times and cultures have changed. No longer can widows be excluded from qualifying for the medal on grounds of immoral behaviour as they once were and recent recipients are not necessarily female or even family. The medal was touched by politics early in its inception but for generations it has fulfilled a fundamental need for the state to publicly show respect for the extraordinary and tragic service of individuals and families. The medal as originally conceived was for mothers alone. The idea was first publicized through Toronto’s Mail and Empire. On 22 September 1916, the paper published a letter from Canadian novelist William Alexander Fraser urging that a silver cross be struck as a tribute to the mothers of slain soldiers. In the following days and months the letter drew favourable comments and was reprinted in some of the most popular and respected publications of the day.2 Fraser brought patriotism and popular storytelling to his idea. Well-known for his novels and widely published articles he was often compared with British author Rudyard Kipling. Both, for example, wrote children’s books filled with animal characters. Canadian right down to his animals, Fraser stuck to beavers and bears although, like the author of the Jungle Book he had spent time in the land of lions and tigers. His work as an oil prospector had taken him far from his native Nova Scotia to Burma, India and Afghanistan.3 When ill health forced him to abandon the drill, he took up the pen and made a living with words. Fraser’s letter to the editor of the Mail and Empire began: “Sir, I should like to suggest that Canada might pay a beautiful and deserved tribute to the mothers of slain Canadian soldiers, by having struck a medal named the Silver Cross.”4 He used the common phrase of the day calling the medal the badge of the mothers’ “heroic sacrifice,” but he also used his creative skill as a storyteller. He contrived a simple street scene to convey the medal’s meaning in the everyday world of a war-weary country. “Men might take off their hats when they met a woman with this medal on her breast; they could get up, even if tired, and give her a seat in a crowded car.”5 Fraser knew words alone would not bring the medal into being so he enlisted the help of Prime Minister Robert Borden. He wrote to Borden enclosing the newspaper clipping of his letter to the editor and asked Evans Silver Cross Medal.indd 43 4/15/2010 1:28:37 PM 1 : History of the Silver Cross Medal Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2010 42 Silver Cross mothers at Vimy CW M 5 8E 6 4 .1 1 97 90 33 5 00 1 Evans Silver Cross Medal.indd 42 4/15/2010 1:28:37 PM 2 Canadian Military History, Vol. 19 [2010], Iss. 1, Art. 5 http://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol19/iss1/5 44 for “kind consideration” of the matter.6 The prime Minister e n t h u s i a s t i c a l l y r e p l i e d seven days later promising to discuss the suggestion with his colleagues. In a subsequent memorandum Borden noted it was “a wonderfully taking idea” and “aught to be gone on with at once” when it mattered the most to the mothers who had “earned such recognition.”7 Silver Token of Pride to Replace Depressing Cloak of Black The publication of Fraser’s idea came when women’s mourning clothes, an obvious and at times extravagant symbol of loss, had become a subject of public debate. During the war this long-time custom was questioned for the negative impact it might have on support for the war. More than a year before Fraser announced his idea for the silver cross an editorial in the Toronto Globe on 8 May 1915 made reference to an appeal by the National Council of Women suggesting that instead of wearing depressing black women should “wear a band of royal purple on the arm, to signify that the soldier they mourn died gloriously for his King and Country.”8 Notably, the editorial was published the day after the sinking of the Lusitania. News of the ship being torpedoed by the Germans had reached North America just hours after the event and filled the headlines the next day. The galvanizing effect on Canadian public opinion was palpable then and for long after. Even Canadian suffragist Nellie McClung, not known for her support of the war, later admitted, “It was the Lusitania that brought me to see the whole truth. Then I saw that we were waging war on the very Prince of Darkness.” 9 In this context it is not surprising that individuals would rally their support for the war in a wide variety of ways including calling for mourning black to be replaced with a band the colour of royal power. The value of mourning clothes was questioned on both sides of the ocean and, interestingly enough, of the battlefield. On 30 January 1915, three months before the Globe piece, the London Times published a report submitted by the subject of an unidentified neutral country about life in Berlin. In the matter of mourning, it is agreed that the wearing of black can only tend to depress the spirits of those who have relatives at the front – so an association has been formed which proposes to substitute for all mourning a little scarfpin, with the inscription, “Stolz gabich ein teures Haupt furs Vaterland” (Proudly I gave a beloved one for the

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