Unparalleled Valour
The Story of James Richardson, VC

UNPARALLELED VALOUR is a groundbreaking film, painstakingly researched and epic in scope about an ordinary boy who became the most extraordinary of heroes in WWI. Written by his own hand, told in his own words, it is the story of Canada's only piper to earn the Victoria Cross.

​

Through gripping re-enactments UNPARALLELED VALOUR will take audiences into the trench

warfare and combat actions of the Canadian Scottish on the battlefields of Belgium and France allowing them to experience first-hand what it is like to be a piper, without a gun, leading men in a charge against deadly enemy fire.

​

With Great Britain’s declaration of war on 4, August 1914 Canada found itself thrust into war. The 50th

Gordon Highlanders of Victoria, the 72nd Seaforth’s from Vancouver, and over 200 militias from across

Canada were drawn together to form the first Canadian Army. Together they forged a national identity in the mud and blood of WWI. They did it by doing what the British and the French had not been able to do on the battlefields of Vimy Ridge and along the Somme. They pushed the Germans from their trenches with undaunted courage, valour, and an unlikely weapon – the Great Highland Bagpipe.

​

With the aid of Canada’s Highland Regiments whose “instrument of war” inspired a sense of national

pride, they went over the top of the trenches, cut through the wire entanglements, and took the German positions.

​

UNPARALLELED VALOUR is the story of a young Canadian, Piper James Richardson, who on the 8th of October 1916, during the battle of the Somme, led his regiment into battle without a gun. It is the story

of a boy, who with unparalleled valour, picked up a set of bagpipes and stood in the face of deadly enemy fire and turned the tide of war with the defiant sound of the Highland Bagpipe.

 

This is the intimate portrait of a lad from British Columbia, 20 years of age, slight in stature, and with the courage of a giant who helped earn for Canada a new place among the nations of the world. For his actions James

Richardson became Canada's only piper to earn the Victoria Cross.