In their footsteps: Canadians honour troops who liberated the Netherlands

Ideas53:59A Walk of Remembrance: Honouring Canadian soldiers who helped liberate the Netherlands

*Originally published on May 1, 2023. 

In September 2022, 90 Canadians travelled to the Netherlands for a nine-day pilgrimage. They went to pay tribute to their relatives who'd helped liberate the country in the Second World War. 

They walked 60 kilometres through villages and towns, visiting old battlefields and the cemeteries where Canada's soldiers are buried.

The pilgrimage was the brainchild of Karen Hunter, whose own father, Gilbert Hunter, fought to liberate Holland from the Nazis. He originally joined the 30th Light Anti-Aircraft unit as a gunner. 

Like so many veterans, Hunter rarely spoke to his family of his wartime experiences.

But in 2004, at the age of 85, he gave his grown children his memoir of those years. 

Fifteen years later, Karen Hunter decided that other descendants of those who had served in the Netherlands needed to experience firsthand the enduring Dutch gratitude toward Canada. She invited other Canadians to join, and a pilgrimage, called In Our Father's Footsteps, was born.

Descendants of soldiers from across Canada signed up. Elliott Shiff of Toronto was among them.

"When Karen first told me that she was planning this pilgrimage, my first thought was, 'Of course I have to go. And then I called my brother and I said, 'you have to go too'," he said. 

Elliott and Jonathan Shiff went to honour their great uncle, Harry Bockner, their grandmother Mollie's brother. They knew almost nothing about Harry. Mollie never spoke of him. 

"There was a picture of him on the wall," Jonathan said. "A black and white picture of him in uniform that he had sent her from Rome. And we had a picture of his grave in Holland, but we didn't know anything about him." 

After their grandmother died, the brothers discovered more than a thousand letters that Mollie and Harry had exchanged throughout the war, from 1941 until the day he was killed in 1945. 

A tale of two soldiers

Harry Bockner and Gilbert Hunter joined the army together and became close friends. The two were initially sergeants in the 30th Light Anti-Aircraft Battery, led by Major Conn Smythe, well-known then as a former player and then owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs. It was Smythe who'd put together a regiment that contained some of Canada's finest athletes. 

After serving together briefly, Harry and Gilbert were separated. They reconnected once during a chance encounter while serving in Italy.

Soon after, and by now both in Holland, Gilbert heard over the army radio that his friend had been killed during Operation Cannonshot. Gilbert jumped into his jeep and arrived at Harry's gun position just as the men were sewing him up in his blanket. Gilbert helped lift Harry's body into the vehicle to transport him to a temporary burial site. That was on April 11, 1945, fewer than four weeks before Victory in Europe (VE) Day. 

"I think that in many ways, when Harry died, a piece of my father died with him — a piece of his youth," Karen said.

Karen and Elliott realized the connection while she planned the pilgrimage, she said. 

"Someone had actually taken Harry's name and attached it to the cenotaph in Guelph. And I thought, 'who would have known that Harry was born in Guelph? And who, all of these decades later, would have taken the time to put his name on the cenotaph'?"

That person was Karen.

Together, Karen, Elliott, his brother Jonathan, and 87 other Canadian descendants of soldiers who had helped to liberate Holland from the Nazis, gathered to remember.

Those villages knew these Canadian soldiers. They know them by name.- Karen Hunter

Participants were divided into platoons according to the division that their fathers, grandfathers and uncles had served. 

As they walked, they held high the Canadian Remembrance Torch, engineered by students from McMaster University in Hamilton.

They visited Gorsell, where Harry was killed. 

'Gratitude for the sacrifices'

As the Canadians entered the village of Etten, they were greeted by a choir. "There were several that welcomed us like this: Etten, Almen, Doetinchem. Those villages knew these Canadian soldiers. They [still] know them by name."

The Canadian group held ceremonies and prayed on Dutch soil, at Holten, the large Canadian cemetery where Harry and 1,396 other Canadians lie, and at a small piece of farmland where Harry's body had been temporarily interred.

Antje Geidenbeek attended the ceremony. She was 14 years old in 1945 and lived near the site where Harry Bockner and a dozen other Canadian soldiers had been buried. 

"It was hard to understand that these young men fought and died for my — for our — freedom, and now they were lying in a field."

Each Saturday during and after the war, Geidenbeek and her friends spent time at the cemetery. They tidied the gravesites and laid flowers. Today, Geidenbeek is 92 and in a wheelchair.

At the recent ceremony, she handed flowers to her grandchildren who placed them once again at the original burial site.

"I wanted to show gratitude for the sacrifices the soldiers made," she said. 

Jonathan Shiff recited a prayer for all of the Canadian soldiers. In his hand, he held Harry's Jewish prayer book.

"I've had many thoughts about what it means, Shiff told the group, "and find myself here… to commemorate the lives of Harry and the thousands of Canadian soldiers who left the comforts and safety of their wonderful country and spent years in the cold, the wet, the mud, the loneliness, the unending noise and the fear over here in Europe in order to keep the world safe and prevent the Nazi conquest.

"So I've been thinking about how one can use memory to improve things and to give meaning to somebody's life and to their death."

For Karen Hunter, the pilgrimage passed the torch to the next generation, and it strengthened the already strong bond between Canada and the Netherlands, which celebrates its liberation from the Nazis on May 5.

"The Dutch are known for remembrance, and Canadians, not so much. As we walked through the villages carrying the Canadian Remembrance Torch, it was like making a statement: as Canadians, we too will remember," she said.

 

Written and produced by Alisa Siegel. 

Special thanks to Peter Van der Meij, Jane-Fleetwood-Morrow, Antje Geidenbeek, Tjeerd Maalderink, Anna Maria Esposito, Yuvraj Sandhu, and Sebastian Tattersall. Thanks also to Kate Zieman, Bob Rempel and Melody Moayedi of CBC Library and Archives.