First World War hero honoured in ceremony in Chilliwack

One hundred years to the day James Cleland Richardson and his bagpipes disappeared in the First World War, Chilliwack’s long-lost adopted son was honoured in a rainy ceremony outside the local museum.

As a piper played, family and friends laid wreaths at the statue of the 20-year-old Scottish piper, who came to Canada to serve.

It was Oct. 8, 1916 when Richardson, stuck in the muddy trenches in France during one of the bloodiest battles of the war, decided to pull out his bagpipes.

“And they were basically caught in a position where they could not advance and eventually James Richardson asked, ‘Can I play the pipes?’ And it was because he stood upon the parapet and walked back and forth under a hail of rifle fire, machine gun fire, shrapnel bursts that men rallied,” military historian Paul Ferguson said.

Inspired, Richardson’s troops were able to assault the barbed wire, push forward and capture the German position. For his bravery in the Battle of the Somme, Richardson received the Victoria Cross posthumously since he died trying to retrieve his bagpipes.

“They ended up in a school and the school didn’t know what to do with them. And eventually the tartan got publicized and somebody in Victoria recognized it. That’s the thing, nobody in Scotland knew the tartan,” Richardson’s nephew David Boulding said.

In November 2006, Richardson’s battle-worn bagpipes were shipped to B.C. from Scotland and welcomed home in a ceremony in Victoria. They’ve lived at the legislature ever since but for a limited time, the surviving musical instruments – complete with the tartan – are on display at the Chilliwack Museum in a centennial celebration for James Cleland Richardson.

“They’re not very playable…dug out of the mud in France,” said Boulding with a laugh.