Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Jennie Carignan greets 102-year-old veteran Roland Lalonde after a commemorative ceremony at the National War Memorial in Ottawa on May 8, to mark the 80th anniversary of the Liberation of the Netherlands and Victory in Europe Day.Ashley Fraser/The Globe and Mail
Roland Lalonde, 102, vividly recalls the fierce fighting 80 years ago, as Canadian forces battled their way across Europe to liberate the Netherlands from German rule.
“The Germans were retreating. It wasn’t easy. It was hardship,” said the frail but spry former soldier, his blazer glittering with medals.
Mr. Lalonde was the oldest veteran to lay a wreath at Ottawa’s war memorial Thursday at a ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe, and the freeing of Holland from the Nazi yoke.
Mr. Lalonde had enlisted in the army as a clerk in 1942, but traded his typewriter for a rifle, fighting with the Royal 22nd Regiment through Italy and into the Netherlands, where Canadian forces liberated the Dutch people in 1945.
On Thursday, within the shadow of Ottawa’s war memorial, generations of veterans gathered with diplomats and serving members of Canada’s military, as well as young cadets, to mark Germany’s unconditional surrender 80 years ago.
Margriet Vonno, the Netherlands’ ambassador to Canada, paid tribute to the valour of Canadian soldiers who rescued her country from oppression and starvation.
On May 5, 1945, German forces surrendered to Canadian Lieutenant-General Charles Foulkes in Wageningen, on what is still celebrated in Holland as Liberation Day.
“In the final months of the war, the First Canadian Army played a crucial role in the push through Holland and the Rhineland, engaging in fierce and decisive battles that contributed to the defeat of Hitler’s Third Reich,” Ms. Vonno said.
“The Dutch remember the war vividly, the brutality of the Nazi occupation, the hunger, the suffering of the starvation winter we had in 1944-45, the continued executions of resistance fighters up until the final day, and the courage of those who resisted and those who came to liberate us.”
Netherlands Ambassador to Canada Margriet Vonno places a wreath on May 8.Ashley Fraser/The Globe and Mail
She told The Globe and Mail her father was a boy of 4 when the Royal Canadian Hussars entered his hometown of Kampen, giving him a chocolate bar – his first, she imagines.
“I think it was the best chocolate he’s ever had,” she said.
Today the graves of 7,600 Canadian troops are still tended by Dutch families, many of whom are in contact with the relatives of the fallen, she said.
For Dutch-Canadian MP Anita Vandenbeld, the courage of Canadian troops marks a vivid chapter in her family’s history.
Shaking the hand of Mr. Lalonde, she showered him with profuse thanks.
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you,” she said, explaining how Canadians had liberated her family including her father, then a boy of 5.
When the Canadian tanks rolled through his hometown of Deventer, her father had been hiding in a cellar. He had ventured out to play as the fighting died down, but a Canadian soldier yelled at him and gestured for him to go back to his hiding place.
“They stayed in the cellar until the tanks came through,“ she said. ”Canadians were throwing cigarettes to the parents and candies to the children. He told me it was a hard caramel."
95-year-old veteran Ray Paquette takes in the service. He would go on to serve in the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps for 21 years.Ashley Fraser/The Globe and Mail
Ray Paquette, 95, remembers rushing out into the street in his village in Drummondville, Que., and dancing with his neighbours on V-E Day.
The army cadet was 15 at the time – too young to see action in the Second World War. But he soon joined up and served in the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps for 21 years.
Unstooped despite his age, Mr. Paquette was among the veterans who stood to salute as a bugler sounded the Last Post.
Two military sentries, guarding the war memorial, stood preternaturally still as a lone piper, resplendent in his tartan, performed the poignant Lament.
Patti Gray, a former air force supply technician with the Algonquin Regiment who was among the LGBTQ service personnel purged from the Canadian Forces, recalled how her great-uncle Richard Sammon, a medic, lost his life liberating the Netherlands.
“We need to remember that war is hell,” she said. “People need to see not just what happened, who didn’t make it, but the people who are left behind.”
More than a million Canadians and Newfoundlanders served in the Second World War, with more than 45,000 giving their lives. They played a crucial role in the Allied liberation of Europe including on the beaches of Normandy. On Juno Beach, Canadian soldiers – including members of the Regina Rifles, a regiment that numbered in its ranks Indigenous soldiers and Saskatchewan farmers –defied heavy fire to overcome German resistance and capture seemingly impenetrable concrete bunkers, fighting their way inland.
In the air, Canadian fighter pilots distinguished themselves at the Battle of Britain, and Canada’s bomber crews flew perilous sorties in Lancasters over Germany. Meanwhile, the Royal Canadian Navy took heavy losses protecting convoys of supply ships in the Battle of the Atlantic.
Patti Gray, is a former air force supply technician with the Algonquin Regiment who was among the LGBTQ service personnel purged from the Canadian Forces. Her great-uncle Richard Sammon, a medic, lost his life liberating the Netherlands.Ashley Fraser/The Globe and Mail
Roger Ellsworth, who served for 25 years in the Navy, retiring as a Petty Officer, Second Class, said he would have liked to have seen Prime Minister Mark Carney representing Canada at the larger European V-E Day events as “a mark of respect because of what the Canadians did during the war.”
Canada was represented by Governor-General Mary Simon at the V-E Day commemorations in the Netherlands.
George Slade, a veteran whose decades of service included the Korean War and UN peacekeeping missions in Egypt and Cyprus, also would have liked to have seen Mr. Carney representing Canada on V-E Day in Europe.
“At this time, he should have gone in person,” he said. “I don’t condemn him for not going. It would have been important to attend.”
Peter Stainforth, a British army veteran who served in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, with an impressive row of medals to show for his 22 years of service, said the valour of Canadians in the Second World War was legendary in the British army.
“We stood shoulder to shoulder with the Canadians. They have always contributed above and beyond,” he said.
He now lives in Ottawa and works on the light railway. His mother, Jane Stainforth, visiting from her village of Winslow, Buckinghamshire, said she was slightly surprised that the turnout in Ottawa was not bigger, given the contribution of Canadians in the Second World War.
She said more people turned out to celebrate V-E Day in her village, where all the shops were decorated.
Jennie Carignan, Chief of the Defence Staff, said the memory of Canadians’ sacrifice has not faded with the decades that have passed.
“Through city after city, town after town, village after village, in flooded fields and along shattered streets, they fought,” she said.
“Conditions were harsh and progress was slow – every step forward exacted at great cost. In the final weeks before the guns fell silent, hundreds of Canadians fell, a final heavy price paid to hasten the end of the war in Europe and the unspeakable suffering of civilian populations and communities.”