Newfoundland and Labrador’s Unknown Soldier honoured [Video]

Millions are celebrating Canada’s 157th birthday this year — as they do every year — with fireworks, food and family. In Newfoundlandand Labrador, it is a day of mourning for one of the bloodiest battles of the First World War.

Some call it emotional whiplash – a heavy burden of history the province has learned to carry for decades.

This year, the province will mark the day with a ceremony for the recently repatriated Unknown Soldier, who will stand for the hundreds of men who died during the war and do not have tombs of their own.

‘You could smell the blood’

The province of Newfoundland and Labrador we know today was a country of its own back then. It wouldn’t join confederation until 1949, 82 years after Canada officially became a country.

The Dominion of Newfoundland – as it was called at the time – had some 800 men fight on the fields of Beaumont …