NOVEMBER 2008
Volume 11, Number 11
Eagle Feather News
is a division of
ACS Aboriginal
Consulting Services
By John Lagimodiere
Of Eagle Feather News
Twenty veterans bowed their heads in silence at an intimate and emotional gathering held at the Dakota Dunes Casino. As they have for many years, Canadians met in school gyms, town halls, arenas and outside at the local veterans cenotaph for Remembrance Day.
At the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day on the eleventh month, millions of Canadians came together to remember and honour their warriors with a bugle blaring the Last Post and a solemn moment of silence.
Ray Sanderson was a Corporal in the Canadian Army and served for seven and a half years on the occupying force in Germany during the 1960s. He came to the ceremony to remember his family and fellow Aboriginal soldiers.
“This day means a lot. I was in Europe and saw lots of the graves and graveyards. I toured. My grandfather he fought at the Battle of the Somme so I went there and to Dieppe and to the cemeteries in Holland,” said Sanderson, a member of the Chakastaypasin First Nation.
“Many of our young Aboriginal men went to war and did not come back. This is an emotional time of the year for me as I had two grandfathers in WW I and my five uncles were in WWII and that is where we lost my dad.”
Sanderson was frightened to die overseas when his unit was prepared for the start of World War Three.
Tomkins was too young to enlist and by the time he made it into the army and was headed overseas, the war was finished.
“There were five of us brothers that served in that war, I was the only one that didn’t go overseas,” said an emotional Tomkins at the ceremony. “Twenty-seven of my extended family were in WWII and we had two uncles in WW I.
Frank Tomkins, a Second World War veteran, placed the wreath at the Dakota Dunes ceremony..