Fewer than 100 Canadians who died while serving in the world wars were repatriated for burial Until the horrific explosion and fire in HMCS Kootenay which caused nine sailors’ deaths in 1969, Canada’s policy was that all service personnel who died abroad were to be buried overseas. Despite this policy, though, the remains of several Canadian fatalities of the world wars were returned to Canada for burial.    Most Canadian personnel who went overseas during the wars served in Britain at one time or another. Although British officials disapproved of the return of remains from Britain and tried to stop it, Canadian authorities were less inclined to discourage attempts and occasionally bent the rules. Repatriation from elsewhere was strictly forbidden. The Commonwealth War Graves Commissi...

The Faces to Graves project is collecting stories and photographs of nearly 6,000 Canadian soldiers buried in Dutch cemeteries For three quarters of a century, people lost in reflection passing through Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery could glean but the barest details of the life and death of Captain Thomas Edward Emmet Clarke. Few facts are inscribed on his headstone. He served with the Canadian Provost Corps and died on April 17, 1945, aged 29. Clarke lived an ordinary life and like so many other ordinary young men who died fighting for their countries throughout the ages, his story ordinarily would have been lost to history. But Clarke’s story, along with those of thousands of other young Canadians who died in the fight to liberate the Netherlands, is to be preserved for gener...

No matter what era, the moment when a soldier ships out is laden with bittersweet emotion—excitement, uncertainty, pride and trepidation For soldiers and those they leave behind, shipping out is all about goodbyes. Iconic photographs of wartime goodbyes the world over tend to focus on loved ones—family and friends massed dockside to bid farewell to waving soldiers swarming a ship’s deck; American soldiers and sailors, filled with bravado, kissing their girls on the steam-clouded platforms of New York’s Penn Station; troops milling about on a tarmac, waiting with stoicism to board a transport flight while family members wave from behind barriers. Mothers and fathers, wives and sweethearts, family and friends. Perhaps no goodbye is more wrenching than that of a son or daughter. Cana...