Living Up to a Legend by Diana Bishop

Author:Diana Bishop
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2017-01-31T05:00:00+00:00

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Like so many other times in my life, it wasn’t long before my grandfather’s ghostly presence resurfaced — a short time after I came back from Bermuda, the National Film Board of Canada approached my father about making a documentary about Billy Bishop, as a matter of public record. This had come about largely on the coattails of the success of a new stage production called Billy Bishop Goes to War, written by John MacLachlan Gray in collaboration with actor Eric Peterson, that had premiered to great national acclaim in 1978. The musical was such a success that it rekindled the Bishop legend and lustre, not just for me, but for the whole country.

The play portrayed my grandfather as a scrappy colonial who suddenly finds he is really good at something — fighting and shooting down the “Huns,” as they referred to the Germans in World War One. I was mesmerized by Eric Peterson’s tour de force performance where he plays not only Billy Bishop but over a dozen characters, both male and female, people who my grandfather had run across in his trajectory toward becoming a war hero.

My favourite was Lady St. Helier, the British socialite and friend of Winston Churchill’s with connections and influence in the war office. She had been a pivotal figure in my grandfather’s life, helping him make the transition from the trenches to the air, and Peterson was masterful in his chiding rendition of the elderly matron who took my grandfather under her wing.

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