[Bruce Parker (RIP)]

....beware:

Great War film items go AWOL
Producers, supplier pleading for return of stolen rare artifacts
GAYLE MACDONALD
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail (Sept. 20, 2006)
What began as a noble artistic endeavour wrapped on a sour -- and ignoble -- note.
Soon after the ambitious TV movie The Great War finished shooting in Quebec last summer, the Montreal producers, Galafilm Inc., made a disheartening discovery -- more than 1,000 items of largely irreplaceable First World War insignia, uniforms and equipment had walked off the set, they suspect, with some of the 150 descendents who had been hired to re-enact their great-grandfather's bloody battles in the trenches.
And retired Major Ian Newby, whose company, International Movie Services, provided the filmmakers with the authentic military paraphernalia, is none too pleased.
"The list is enormous," Newby clipped briskly into the phone from his home base in Aldergrove, B.C. "It's more than five pages. It's taken a quarter of a century to amass the World War I Canadian Expeditionary Force items. And at one blow, we are severely impaired in our ability to put something like this together again.
"I've contacted everyone I know in the industry to see what we can do, but unfortunately some of the items are going to be irreplaceable," he seethed. "It's either a group of people who decided this was a good opportunity to outfit themselves for a future re-enactment, or they didn't realize the significance of taking a souvenir. When one or two take souvenirs, it's a burden that can be borne. This is a real loss not only to the motion-picture industry but to Canadian history."
Galafilm's The Great War by award-winning director Brian McKenna, starring Justin Trudeau, is a four-hour epic to mark the 90th anniversary of Canada's involvement in the First World War.
It's slated to broadcast in two episodes on CBC and Radio-Canada during spring, 2007.
Galafilm producer Natalie Dubois said her company feels sick about the theft, and has sent two e-mail messages since mid-August asking for the return of the items. Dubois says the first letter was sent to the descendents Aug. 10. "We did not get many answers. In the following week, we received one package, then a few days later, two or three other items were sent back to us."
The next letter went out Sept. 15. "This time [it] mentioned that IMS wanted us to call the police. Three days later, more than one-third of the descendants had already written back, and most of them wrote that they did not take anything. And we have no reason not to believe them.
"We are expecting the rest of them to answer by the end of the week," Dubois added. "At this point, we are not considering calling the police, but if we do not recover most of the missing items, IMS or our insurance company might force us to. A certain amount of loss is perfectly normal with this kind of project: buttons fall off, people lose things in the field, stuff breaks, etc. But in this case, it was more than that."
The descendants were chosen through an open call last year, with ads placed on radio, on the Internet and in local newspapers.
Newby hesitated to put a dollar figure on the theft, adding that "at present I'll keep that between CBC and Galafilm." However, he did offer some insight into the inherent worth of some of the missing things. "The Canadian army extensively used British-made webbing that was patented in 1908. We're missing 28 sets of PO8 webbing, which is worth $2,000 apiece.
"As for the real Canadian World War I insignia?" the major adds. "Well, it's heartbreaking when you consider that this stuff isn't available in any kind of volume any more. A single cap badge or a shoulder title can be worth $25 to $50 apiece. And we're missing over 400."
In the past decade, Newby's Fraser Valley-based company has provided uniforms and equipment for more than 5,000 productions, including present-day thrillers such as 16 Blocks and Paul Gross's yet-to-be-made Passchendaele, about the great battle of 1917. Slated to being shooting in Alberta this autumn, Newby said he's "grateful" Gross's production has been pushed back. "We're going to have to spend the winter trying to recover the items, or source new ones."
Yesterday, the former major said IMS did get a box from Galafilm with seven or eight items they had recovered. And one descendent from Vancouver called him to say he is be bringing back one of the First World War grey-back shirts.
He said he would like the chaps who walked off with complete uniforms for a Black Watch and German soldier to use Galafilm's offer to pay for shipment by FedEx.
"The sheer volume indicates it's a group," Newby said. "I can't comment on the command and control system [that was in place during the shoot] because I wasn't there. But what I can say is that in the future Canadian productions should definitely hire a real soldier, a bloody-minded individual who will make everybody sign for each button and hang them up by their thumbs if it doesn't come back!"
A partial list of purloined items
Uniform
Collarless shirt x 21
Officer pants x 1
Black Watch hose tops x 5
Sporrans x 3
Kilt pins x 4
Kilt apron x 3
Pr. puttees x 36
Pr. navy puttees x 19
Canadian helmets x 9
Canadian soft caps x 6
Canadian tunics x 21
Trench caps x 55
Ponchos x 12
German gas mask tins x 3
Badges
Canadian lapel badge x 19
Canada cap badge x 53
Canada shoulder badge x 5
Set of captain badges x 2
Royal Van Doos cap badge x 19
Black Watch shoulder badge x 14
Black Watch lapel badge x 18
PPCLI shoulder badge x 20
Dragoons collar badge x 2
Nfld. regiment badge x 30