Canada’s First Martyr
He lies in his quiet grave, our first martyr. He was a conscientious objector to military service, and was sentenced a few weeks ago to two years in the Penitentiary.
He became insane, and a few days before his death he was removed to Selkirk Asylum, where he passed away.
Poor boy; he was almost alone here—his friends all live in England. He had a sweetheart, and in a letter to her he said he rejoiced to have “the privilege of witnessing for Christ.”
Immediately before his arrest, which he supposed was impending, he sent 400 dollars to his mother in England. His name was David Wells.
It may be in the coming years his name will be honoured, but he has gone—gone from this world where true goodness is forever crucified. “He was taken from prison and from judgment.”
The minister of the church to which he belonged, and who conducted the funeral ceremony, said “he was a man of exceptional physique and highest moral character.”But his sensitive, refined nature could not endure the horrors of a Canadian prison, and his reason fled.Everyone seems wishful to evade all responsibility. The doctors at the asylum say he was too far gone for them to be able to help him, and that he might have been cured had he been taken there sooner. But the tortured spirit has fled away to rest, and the world goes on—I will not say unheeding or uncaring—for some both heed and care, but they are, for the most part, those who have no power to stop these terrible evils.One minister, one of the best and bravest in all Canada, Rev. William Ivens, a Methodist minister of Winnipeg, journeyed to Selkirk to attend the funeral. He has written to the Press, calling himself a conscientious objector, and has repeatedly urged the release from prison of all C.O.’s. He has written to Premier Borden asking for a full inquiry into this death, and for the suspension of the prison officials until all is cleared up, which, of course, it can never be. His letters have all been published in the Press.Mentally, I contrast him with another “minister of the Gospel of the Man of Sorrows” who in his pulpit, the day before this poor boy was laid to repose, said that “the conscientious objectors did not deserve to be fed by the State three meals a day, but should all be banished to a cannibal island.”I have called David Wells “Canada’s First Martyr.” Perhaps this is incorrect, for many Roman Catholic missionaries suffered death at the hands of hostile Indians in the early days of this country.But I suppose we all thought that the days of martyrdom had passed, and I believe that this poor boy has given his life for the grandest cause that it was ever the lot of man to serve.He might have suffered as much had he gone to the war, where he would have been but one in a crowd of poor slaughtered men, and instead of dying with them he has died for them; hence he is undoubtedly a martyr, and it is true to-day as ever that “The noble army of martyrs praised Thee, O Lord.”Gertrude Richardson, 1918. [2]