Timothy Findley’s the Wars

This highly theatrical adaptation of Timothy Findley’s classic novel traces the brutal coming of age of Robert Ross?a sensitive idealist who goes off to the Great War in 1915. Ross, who has a fondness for animals and shares a strong bond with his wheelchair-bound sister, trades his comfortable surroundings in Canada for the nightmare world of trench warfare. We watch Ross’s slow unravelling as he moves from home to train to barracks and, finally, to the mud, smoke, and chlorine gas of the front line in France. With death and dying everywhere around him, Ross makes a desperate attempt to show his faith in life. Cruelty, heroism, terror and honour? The Wars takes us deep inside the mind of a soldier and straight onto the bloody battlefield. The Wars is one of Canada’s most beloved novels, winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction in 1977. This adaptation evokes the spirit, imagery, and heart of the novel, and adds the immediacy of the theatrical form.