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opinion

Serge Marc Durflinger is an associate professor of history at the University of Ottawa.

The enormous popularity of the Second World War film Dunkirk has catapulted a virtually unknown Canadian hero to the forefront of public discussion. It's about time that Canadians recognized the remarkable wartime contribution of Commander James Campbell Clouston from Montreal.

Even though Commander Clouston is not named in the film, he is clearly the inspiration for the unflappable naval officer portrayed by Kenneth Branagh.

On May 10, 1940, the Germans launched a spectacularly successful offensive against France and the Low Countries and, in only two weeks, pushed the remnants of the defeated French and British armies into a shrinking perimeter centred on the port of Dunkirk along the Channel coast. A seaborne evacuation to Britain seemed the only way of saving the hundreds of thousands of men trapped with their backs to the sea. Could Britain withstand an expected German invasion without these men? With the outcome of the war literally hanging in the balance, greatness was thrust upon an anonymous Canadian hero.

Commander Clouston, 39, had been serving in Britain's Royal Navy for years when, on May 27, he was assigned to Dunkirk as pier-master of a long, narrow jetty, a wood and concrete breakwater known as the east mole. For five gruelling days and nights, he tirelessly organized the assembly of men to their embarkation point and oversaw the continuous docking and loading of several ships at once, notwithstanding enemy air attacks. He remained calm, reassuring and determined.

Read more: J. Campbell Clouston, the Canadian war hero that Dunkirk the film – and history – has forgotten

More than 100,000 men embarked from the east mole during the time that he was in command, more than from any other single location in the Dunkirk perimeter. Overall, some 338,000 British and French troops reached British shores by June 4, when the evacuation ended. Hope was restored to Britain during one of the grimmest moments of the war; and this selfless Canadian had helped grant Winston Churchill's "miracle of deliverance."

So why had so few Canadians ever heard of Commander Clouston until a blockbuster movie revived interest in him? Even though he was serving with British forces, as did thousands of Canadians, he was also one of our own, a hockey-playing, wise-cracking Canadian with parents in Montreal and a brother in the Canadian navy. In knee-jerk fits of self-righteous nationalist indignation, Canadians from coast to coast loudly bemoaned the fact that Commander Clouston's name and nationality were ignored in the film, conveniently forgetting that it remains our responsibility to tell his story.

At least some credit is coming his way: Parks Canada is expected to be honouring Commander Clouston with an appropriate plaque in Montreal along the popular Lachine Canal bike path. Surely other government departments, agencies or Crown corporations, such as the Department of National Defence, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Canadian War Museum and Library and Archives Canada, could do more to preserve the memory of a man who saved so many lives. There is talk of a postage stamp, perhaps a Heritage Minute. The City of Montreal (or Pointe-Claire, his actual birthplace) might name a street, park or public building in his name. Provincial school curricula might liven up their treatment of Canadians at war with a biographical sketch. We need no longer fail his memory.

But all is not lost. This week, I received an e-mail from a former student, now a teacher himself, who, recently having seen the movie, reminded me that he well recalled my mentioning Commander Clouston in class. He no doubt drew some inspiration from the Clouston story. How many others would as well?

On June 1, 1940, Commander Clouston left Dunkirk for a conference in Dover. He insisted on returning to the cauldron from which so many thousands sought to flee but, on his way there the next day, the small craft in which he was embarked was sunk by German aircraft. Commander Clouston was lost at sea. He left behind a pregnant wife and a young son.

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