How a soldier-turned-artist aims to protect the memory of WWI and WWII soldiers

When Jessica Lynn Wiebe joined the Canadian Forces in 2008 at the age of 20, she had to complete a battle fitness test by marching 13.1 kilometres carrying 25 kilograms of gear in under 2½ hours and then dig a trench.

On Thursday, she will test her battle fitness for the first time since she left the Forces — but this time the former artillery gunner will do it as an artist.

"It's not going to be an easy day. I think I'm going to be pretty exhausted by the end of the performance," she told CBC News ahead of the march.

Wiebe will leave Camp Aldershot at 10 a.m. and follow the 14-kilometre rail trail to the Acadia War Memorial in Wolfville, N.S. She'll carry a 25-kilogram concrete sculpture of a sandbag to represent the physical and mental burdens carried by soldiers.

At the memorial, she will build a makeshift trench of 550 sandbags around the memorial "to protect the memory as the monuments become invisible."

"When memorials are in the landscape for a long period of time, they tend to become invisible. This project aims to disrupt that invisibility," she said. "It's about linking a new generation of soldiers and their experience of war with former generations."

Wiebe studied at Acadia University, so the memorial is familiar to her.

The route is deeply symbolic and she's invited the public and other military personnel to join her. During the First World War and Second World War, soldiers from across Nova Scotia took the same route on the Dominion Atlantic Railroad to Camp Aldershot for basic training.

"I'm walking the very first leg on their way to Europe."

Artists often bridge together human experiences, and for Wiebe linking Canada's generations of veterans has been a driving ambition. In 2013, her Afghanistan drawings formed an exhibit at Halifax's Citadel Hill.

The NSCAD University grad is now an artist-in-residence at the MacPhee Centre for Creative Learning in Dartmouth, N.S. In another project, she took the stage with 12 heavy sandbags and heaved them step-by-step across the stage.

"I left the stage carrying two sandbags to show that you can let go to a certain extent, but you'll still always hold onto that little bit. You'll never be able to fully let go of that experience. And I don't think you should fully let go."

Wiebe's family has no military tradition and she joined after meeting an artillery gunner when she was in Grade 12 in her native Manitoba.

"He said you can do anything, like it's all in the mind when it comes to the physical work. I thought, no, I could never do that."

'That experience was like yesterday'

She signed up for the reserves as a summer job ahead of university and planned to work part-time during university. "I am a very stubborn person, so when I got to basic training I really pushed myself."

She served as a bombardier with the 26th Field Artillery Regiment, in Brandon, Man., and deployed to Afghanistan with 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry in 2008. She served in Afghanistan for six months, often outside the base providing protection for construction workers. Then, she was 20. Now, she's almost 30, "but that experience was like yesterday."

"I think it's impossible to go over and come home not having changed," she said.

Since then, she's been thinking a lot about what is physically left behind after war: sandbags, barbed wire, concrete barriers, and wooden towers. Preparing for this project, she read letters from Nova Scotia men who fought overseas in the two world wars.

She followed their footsteps into the Canadian military in 2008 and now will again as an artist, though not everyone expects a soldier to look like her.

"I do get the odd question on Remembrance Day when I'm going down dressed as a civilian but wearing my medals. People will ask me if they're my father's. They won't assume that they're mine," she said. "What is a soldier supposed to look like? I don't know."

On Thursday's march, the former artillery gunner will show people what one soldier looks like. The installation of 550 sandbags will guard the Acadia War Memorial until the end of October.