Members of local family join overseas Legion pilgrimage

Kenneth Brown
of The Clarion

Every two years, a Saskatchewan resident is chosen to make a Royal Canadian Legion pilgrimage in Europe. This year, the pilgrim for was a former Kindersley resident.

Dwane Burke, 34, us a former member of the Kindersley Legion who transferred to the Legion branch in Star City. He was raised in Kindersley and the Saskatchewan man, a teacher, was part of a biennial pilgrimage and tour of sites related to the world wars.

Dwane was joined on the 2017 Pilgrimage of Remembrance by his parents David and Carol Burke of Kindersley, along with his aunt and David’s sister Julie Akre of Swift Current. All are Legion members. David and Julie’s father was a veteran of the Second World War who served at Juno Beach.

The family members flew to Paris on July 8 and arrived home on July 23. The pilgrimage started in Paris on July 9, and it featured Caen, Juno Beach, Dieppe, Ypres, Passchendaele, Somme and Vimy Ridge, among other sites.

There was another Kindersley connection on the pilgrimage. The guide for Dwane and his guests was John Goheen of Port Coquitlam, B.C. Goheen is the nephew of the late Stan Niles, a longtime resident of Kindersley. Dwane, David and Carol found out during the pilgrimage that Goheen spent time in Kindersley.

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The tour stopped at several war cemeteries and monuments, including the Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium, where the names of thousands of soldiers who were killed and have no known gravesites are engraved.

Dwane said he one Pilgrimage of Remembrance Legion member from each province is chosen to participate. Carol Pederson, another Legion member in Star City, encouraged him more than once to apply to be the Saskatchewan pilgrim.

He noted that the timing didn’t work out for him previously with a young family, but his children are older now and he chose to apply. Dwane, whose children are two and four years old, submitted an application late in 2016 and was selected by members of the Saskatchewan Command. He said it was nice to be chosen.

David, his father, has been a Legion member for 35 years, longer than Dwane has been alive. The Saskatchewan pilgrim said he teaches several subjects, including social studies and high school history.

Each of the pilgrims is required to make a presentation on a soldier whose final resting place is in Europe. Dwane did his presentation on Pte. William Thompson, a member of the 46th Battalion of the Canadian infantry who died on April 12, 1917. Thompson, who immigrated to Canada from Scotland, farmed near Arborfield, Sask.

The other pilgrims did a good job on their presentations, he said, and as a teacher, it wasn’t too difficult for him to do the research and make a presentation. He said it was an emotional experience.

The former Kindersley resident said he had been to Europe before and he visited several well-known sites, so he was looking forward to returning to learn more about each location. However, Dwane said he had only been to about 20 per cent of the locations on the 15-day pilgrimage.

“The way that the guide, John Goheen, led us through it, I got much more of the details and the stories on the locations,” he said, saying it was nice for him to learn more about sites with his keen interest in Canadian war history.

As the youngest person on the pilgrimage, he was often asked where his passion for war history comes from. Dwane said he told people his grandfather served in the war and his parents are dedicated Legion members, so he learned to respect and appreciate the history early in his life.

He said it was special to find out that Goheen had a connection to his hometown. It was also special to go in a year when W.D. (Whitey) Bernard, the son of veteran Jack Bernard who was captured in an iconic war image as a child, was on the pilgrimage.

Dwane said other people on the trip had fascinating connections to the war, and to people who were buried in the cemeteries they visited. He said Juno Beach and Vimy Ridge are amazing and powerful places, but he also got to visit and learn about lesser-known sites where Canada’s military made an impact.

He will make a presentation about his trip at the Saskatchewan Command convention in October, but he added that he wants to share the experience in other settings and at home because “I’ve got a responsibility and duty to share and teach that to my kids.”

David said he had never been to Europe before the trip and although he knew about the pilgrimage, going on the tour opened his eyes to things he could be doing as a Legion member. Carol, who had been to Europe before, has been a Legion or Legion Auxiliary member for 30 years.

David and Carol described the large war cemeteries where all of the grave markers are white and curved on top. David said their guide, Goheen, could rewrite the history books with his vast world war knowledge.

The bus would pull off main roads to travel down small paths where Goheen would point to a spot in a field where a battle started and the stories were amazing to hear. The tour exceeded their expectations, they said.

Carol and David admit the information was a lot to digest, but the sights and stories were exceptional. Soldiers were buried nearly anywhere during the war and Carol mentioned a gravesite where people tried to grow a garden without knowing what was buried under the ground.

It was noticed that the flowers weren’t growing as they should, so they dug up the earth and began uncovering the bones of 14 soldiers. Carol said it would take several hours to share all the stories from the pilgrimage.

The highlights of the trip for David included his time at Dieppe and Juno Beach. The husband and wife had a sip of Scotch whisky at Dieppe at 5:20 a.m., the time when the landing was to occur in 1942. David noted that the pilgrimage was “an emotional roller-coaster for everybody.”

David and Carol had a side mission. The Kindersley Legion received an old wooden cross that marked the original gravesite of Prte. William Fakely, a Kindersley resident who died in the First World War. With help from their son, they found Fakely’s grave at the Poelcappelle British Cemetery in Belgium. Carol said, “people on the pilgrimage couldn’t believe that we had one of those crosses.”

She said another highlight was getting to see the graves of John McCrae, who wrote In Flanders Fields during the war, and of the Unknown Soldier. Carol’s most memorable moment came when it rained during an honour guard ceremony at Vimy Ridge.

“Myself and another gentleman, a comrade, were going up and it started to rain,” she added. “It poured and rained until all members in the honour guard put their poppies in the wreath, and then it quit, and at the very end when we had a recap of everybody’s thoughts, one lady put it this way. ‘The rain at Vimy Ridge was like the tears of the soldiers thanking us for being there.’ That was bang on.”

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