Posts Tagged ‘65th Anniversary of VE-Day’

In mid-April 1945, 18-year-old North Shore (N.B.) Regiment Private Stewart MacDonald sheltered under a bridge near the rail station in Zutphen, the Netherlands. He was chest-deep in the Ijssel River, waiting for a lethal rain of shrapnel to stop. Across the river, townspeople, including 17-year-old Frits Hasper and his family huddled underground in vaulted basements and tunnels, waiting for the Second World War to end.

Addressing a standing-room-only crowd in the new Omnisportcentrum—a 5,000-seat multi-use sports arena in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, Mayor Fred de Graaf spoke to the Canadian veterans present and those gathered to honour them. “We knew we could not keep honouring your fallen comrades. We had to pass on the information. We had to let the next generation know of the suffering that we went through. And that is what we have done.”

Every Canadian should have the opportunity to travel to Europe and walk in the footsteps of those who served in the First and Second World Wars. There, part of our history is somehow more tangible; it is found in the cemeteries and on the faces of the people who tend them and remember. For one lucky artist, that opportunity came her way as part of National Defence’s Canadian Forces Artists Program (CFAP). Karole Marois was chosen to paint the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands for CFAP. The impact of that trip was so deep that five years later she is doing it again—creating an even bigger and bolder series to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the liberation.

John Gray, an intelligence officer, was one of the first Canadian liberators to enter Rotterdam after the German surrender. He came out of the city hall where he had been inquiring where he could find the city’s resistance leaders, and saw a dozen or so Dutchmen around his jeep. “As I was about to climb in I saw the cardboard box with the remains of our lunch—sandwiches and pie. If these men were hungry—would it be resented?” Gray then asked one man if the food was of interest. The Dutchman “stared at me incredulously—any use? He climbed onto the bonnet of the jeep and began to break the sandwiches into little bits and to give each man a small handful.