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megram - 55NovOttawa - Index

long-term member took the mission very seriously.
In those pre-amalgamation days, Kanata was an independent
municipality. (It became part of the enlarged city
of Ottawa in January 2000.)
John approached a number of Kanata councillors for
help.“They took me around looking for a place and the city
(of Kanata) was very supportive,” says John.
Over the next two years, John worked with the municipality
and Urbandale, the developer of the Village Green
area.“The developer was terrific too,” he says.
The local legion, the municipality and the developer
contributed funds for the cenotaph at Village Green. In
addition, John also headed a fundraising campaign that saw
22 donors each plant a tree in memory of a loved one on
the site.
The cenotaph was dedicated on September 20, 1998.
“Since then, we’ve held a service there every
November 11 and there have been over 1,000 people at
each one of them,” says John.
As the organizer of all the Remembrance Day ceremonies
at the Village Green cenotaph to date, he has
ensured that troops from Petawawa and students from
local schools participate. Through the rest of the year, he
gardens the park and generally keeps it in good order.
In the lead-up to Remembrance Day, he organizes the
legion’s annual poppy campaign and visits the schools “to
chat about the war. I don’t talk about the rough part, just
what I did.”
After volunteering at 16, John joined the infantry as
part of the Middlesex regiment in his native England.After
being injured, he was transferred to the Royal Army Service
Corps War Department fleet.
“I was a dispatch rider, a motorcyclist,” he says, “and
was part of the force that liberated the Channel Islands.”
It was through this connection with the Channel
Islands that he met his wife,Mavis,a native of Guernsey.The
couple, who have three daughters, nine grandchildren and
three great-grandchildren, immigrated to Canada in 1957.
They have lived in Kanata since 1966.
In 2006, John’s continuing contribution was recognized
with a Minister of Veterans Affairs Commendation.
The prestigious award, instituted in 2001, is presented
annually to “individuals who have contributed in an exemplary
manner to the care and well-being of veterans or to
the remembrance of the contributions, sacrifices and
achievements of veterans.”
John was also awarded a Queen’s Golden Jubilee medal
in 2002, an honour presented to “Canadians who have
made outstanding and exemplary contributions to their
communities or to Canada as a whole.”
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