Artist's Second World War diary goes on display for first ti

The Second World War diary of Canadian artist Robert Buckham, including illustrations he made of his experiences as a prisoner of war, is featured in an exhibition at the West Vancouver Museum.

Buckham was shot down over Germany during a bombing sortie on April 8, 1943. He was captured and imprisoned in at the Stalag Luft III camp in Sagan, Germany.

The Toronto-born artist recorded his PoW experiences in a diary and separate drawings that he managed to conceal in milk cans.

"Behind the Wire: the Wartime Diary and Art of Robert Buckham," which runs Nov. 7 to Feb. 9, also includes works Buckham produced after the war, such as Canadian landscapes and street scenes created for the Globe and Mail in the 1990s.

It's the first time the wartime diary has been put on public display, said assistant curator Kiriko Watanabe.

"He was a wonderful record keeper of day-to-day activities when he was in the camp and also when he was marching westward in Germany when World War II was coming to an end," said Watanabe.

Besides making his own sketches, Buckham also pasted illustrations by other prisoners in his diary.

Buckham, who had attended art classes taught by members of the Group of Seven in Toronto, enlisted in the RCAF during the war. Besides recording details of camp life in his diary - including the "Great Escape" from Stalag Luft III later popularized by the Hollywood movie - his artistic talents were put to use forging documents.

After the war Buckham worked in Montreal as a graphic designer and later moved to Vancouver where in 1973 he started an advertising company. He died in 2003 at age 85.

The West Vancouver Museum selected about 40 drawings for the show from a vast quantity of material provided by Nancy Buckham, the artist's widow, who lives in West Vancouver.

"We actually looked at literally hundreds of drawings that he left," Watanabe said.

The show also includes 19 of Buckham's illustrations borrowed from the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

"What's important about Buckham's work is it's . . . done on the spot, and so as a record of experience and a record of history it's about as immediate as you get," says Laura Brandon, a historian at the war museum.

"This is first-hand witnessing of events."

Despite the dire conditions in the camp, the illustrations sometimes have a lighter tone.

"The thing the I appreciate most about his work is that it's not always depressing," Brandon says. "He's got quite an ability to capture character and . . . the camaraderie of the PoWs also comes across in his work. So you have a sense both of what it was like in terms of being scary and despairing and extremely difficult, but at the same time you get a sense of the moments when there's a bit of levity."

His sketches show domestic scenes in the camp, such as washing hanging on the line.

The mere fact that so much Buckham's work as a PoW survived is "quite incredible," Brandon adds.

"We have very little prisoner of war work in the collection here (at the war museum), and nothing that compares at all with what he managed to produce."

The West Vancouver Museum is staging a series of talks by guest speakers to accompany the exhibition. As well, there will be a screening of the 2001 documentary "Forced March to Freedom," at the West Vancouver Memorial Library on Nov. 27, based on the book of the same name that Buckham wrote and illustrated.