Tantramar residents will mark Remembrance Day this Saturday with two services: one at Convocation Hall with a parade to the cenotaph at Sackville’s Memorial Park, and a ceremony at the cenotaph in Dorchester, hosted by the IODE Shepody Chapter. But for weeks now the streets of both Sackville and Dorchester have been honouring some of the region’s veterans.
A memorial banner program which started in Sackville in 2016 and expanded to Dorchester in 2019 now features 192 banners featuring photos and basic information submitted by family members. The banners are organized by Garth Zwicker and Mike Gillespie, with printing and design costs covered by family members, and installed on lightpoles done by the town of Tantramar public works staff.
This September, Zwicker, Gillespie and about 25 family members attended a ceremony at the Tantramar Civic Centre to unveil 10 new banners to add to the collection.
CHMA spoke to some of those gathered for the occasion:
Darla MacPherson’s grandfather, Russell Kaye, is featured on one of this year’s newest banners. Kaye served as an engineer in World War II, volunteering when he was 33 years old. “He was making $1 a day in the woods,” says MacPherson. “He had one child and my mother was on the way. So he said, I’m going, because that’ll be a good paycheque for my family.”
MacPherson’s mother was born while Kaye was in basic training, and she was five years old before he returned home in 1946. As an engineer, Kaye stayed well past the end of the war to do repairs and clean up.
Like many veterans Kaye didn’t talk much about his experience. “You couldn’t get him to tell stories,” says MacPherson. But she has her grandfather’s pictures and some of his letters, written to her grandmother, Margaret. “He’d just say, ‘I’m doing okay, Peg. Keep sending pictures of the kids.”
Kaye died when MacPherson was 16, and she tears up when asked about the chance to feature him on one of the town’s banners. “When I saw them go up, I said, I’ve got to do that,” she says. “It’s just wonderful to honour him.”
Dorchester resident Mike Purdy was involved with the first run of memorial banners back in 2016, and now has added a banner featuring his father Hubert Purdy to the streets of Dorchester, where he lived and served as village councillor for many years.
The senior Purdy was in the Fourth Armoured Division in World War II. “They had tanks, they had trucks,” says Mike Purdy, “but he was the guy that would walk alongside all of that. He didn’t have a glamorous job, if there was such a thing. But he covered a lot of ground in Europe.”
Hubert Purdy was injured three times before his service came to an end and he returned home to Nova Scotia. Purdy ended up in Dorchester in the late 50’s, taking a job with the Dorchester prison as a guard, and then moving to the Westmoreland Institution prison farm next door.
A few years before Hubert Purdy passed away at 91, the Dorchester school asked him to be a special guest at their Remembrance Day ceremony. “He couldn’t do it, emotionally,” recalls Purdy. “He had some physical problems, but emotionally he just couldn’t do it.” So instead, Purdy and his youngest son interview the elder Purdy. “That was about the most I’d ever seen him reveal,” he recalls.
Purdy says that every year when the banners go up, he and his family members search to find out where Hubert will be featured this time around. “It does it makes you emotional,” he says. “It’s been a good experience.”
Esther Cox could not agree more. She contacted Mike Gillespie, organizer of the Dorchester banners, to get her father Henry Cassie featured. “He was really excellent to deal with,” she says. “It just all happened so quickly. It just means so much to my family.”
Cox’s father served as an aircraft mechanic during the Second World War. “Dad was very, very private about his service,” says Cox. “I’m sure you’ve heard that before.”
Later on, Cox learned about her father’s job in the war from newspaper articles. “They would have to go salvage parts from planes that had actually crashed,” she says. “And what they didn’t know was that they were walking through minefields.”
“I get really emotional just even thinking about it,” says Cox. “He was just a kid when he enlisted.”
“I think he might have turned 18 in that same year, but at the time, he was only 17. So just a child, really, when you think about it.”
Organizers Garth Zwicker and Mike Gillespie say the memorial banner program has just about maxed out. The town has set a limit of 150 banners for Sackville and 50 banners for Dorchester, so with room for just 8 more, it’s not certain whether or not there will be another unveiling in 2024. Zwicker says there are plans afoot for a more permanent use for the memorial banners, though he won’t say what’s in the works.
This year’s Remembrance Day service in Sackville will take place at Convocation Hall on the Mount Allison campus beginning at 10am, followed by a parade, which will march from Convocation Hall to the Cenotaph for the laying of wreathes and crosses.
In Dorchester, the IODE Shepody Chapter has invited people to the Dorchester Cenotaph on Main Street for 10:45am on November 11.
