Category: Press

By Mark Clairmont / Muskoka Today

Today’s war stories are live by the hour on TV—gruesome and graphic as ever. In 1944, during the battle of Normandy, news from the French front was slower returning home than progress marching forward.

Eighty-two years later, a heroic and tragic story has surfaced in a personalized tale written and published—in comic book form—by Jim Dolmage, a former gym teacher at Gravenhurst High School.

The Night in Tilly’s Field is a graphic novel about his uncle Lt. Ernie Phair and “the men I interviewed who were on the battlefield and witnessed his death.”

The intended audience is teenagers to inform them specifically about the Second World War; but also about wars in general, he says. You don’t need to buy the book “I’m offering it free on line.”

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By Jeff Outhit / Waterloo Region Record

Artists Alaire and Toben Racicot are stepping outside the world of fantasy to create a graphic novel about something true: the story of a soldier who died in the Second World War.

Ernie Phair was a machine operator, husband and new father who enlisted in 1941. By 1944, he was an infantry lieutenant, aiming to lead his men as best he could to help liberate Europe from Nazi tyranny.

“I didn’t want to do a typical story of him being this kind of Captain America figure because I don’t believe that is what soldiers do. They all kind of contribute to one another’s success,” said Toben, a writer.

“We don’t want to focus on the pain and suffering that these soldiers went through. We want to focus on the characters,” said Alaire, an illustrator.

The Waterloo couple hopes their 32-page graphic novel will connect in a fresh way with students and others, to help them explore the cost of freedom and what it means to remember.

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