It’s a strange story, one that involves a Greek banknote, a teenage currency collector, a North Saanich historian — and a Second World War aircrew who made it home alive.
A five-man crew from Royal Canadian Air Force 437 Squadron — including pilot Reginald Barnhouse and flight officer Wilfred Louis Karp — were celebrating their return to Canada at a pub in a Montreal suburb.
Nobody’s sure about how they got their hands on a 100 drachma Greek bill, but several of the aircrew signed it that night on Jan. 28, 1946, with the inscription “Lachine: Our First Bar in Canada.”
Fast forward 78 years to last May, when 16-year-old Karolis Zegunis of Maple Ridge, a keen collector of currencies, walked into a local coin shop and bought a box of foreign bank notes for $400.
“There was a whole bunch of random stuff in there from all over the world,” Zegunis said in an interview. “Soviet notes, Germany, Africa — even some from the Sandwich Islands.”
But the one with ink signatures and a Second World War story caught his eye. “The ones with signatures can have a lot of value,” the teenager said.
And he was right, though not just in a monetary sense.
Zegunis posted a photo of the Greek bank note to a Reddit forum devoted to the transcription of handwritten documents.
That caught the attention of Second World War historian and former school teacher Peter Brand in North Saanich, who is well-versed in researching Commonwealth airmen, and had only signed up to Reddit a few days before.
Inspired, Brand set out to not only transcribe the signatures on the bank note, but to identify them and possibly locate their descendants.
Brand dove into a series of internet searches using the RCAF Squadron 437 website, Ancestry.ca, Newspapers.com, LinkedIn, Canada411 and Google. It paid off, and he was eventually able to find the extended family of the two pilots.
On Monday, Remembrance Day, the families of Barnhouse and Karp, along with historian Brand, 76, and Zegunis are meeting at the B.C. Aviation Museum to tie it all together.
The pilots’ families are donating portraits of their now-deceased loved ones, Zegunis is bringing the banknote, and historians are writing up the history to make it a permanent display at the museum.
“I was absolutely surprised by all of this … amazing,” said Cathy Roberts, the youngest daughter of Barnhouse. She said her father, who died in Edmonton in 2001, never really talked about his war years “and I can understand why, with what they went through.”
The 437 Squadron, who signed the bill as “Agitators” — likely a call sign for the crew — flew DC3 transport planes with equipment and personnel throughout the war, and later transported soldiers and high-ranking officers during the German surrender process, said Roberts.
Brand said they were also trained quite quickly to tow gliders as big as the DC3s containing 20 troops, a jeep and arms during Operation Market Garden during late September 1944.
“I don’t know how they got the [Greek] banknote in the first place or the story behind it until now, but it coming out of a bar at the end of the war doesn’t surprise me. My dad liked going to the pubs,” she said. “I’m sure they were all happy about finally getting home and were celebrating that. It must have felt very good for them.”
Barnhouse, known as “Barnie,” had four children, six grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren living on southern Vancouver Island, in Greater Vancouver and in the Okanagan Valley. He spent 42 years before and after the war working for National Cash Register. Daughters Elaine Humphreys and Roberts provided wartime photos of their father.
Barnhouse died at age 86 on May 31, 2001 in Victoria.
Brand also traced and contacted Karp’s niece, Li-Anne McFarlane, who lives in Vancouver. When she heard of the banknote donation, McFarlane donated a framed photograph of Karp in uniform for the exhibit.
Karp died in Vancouver at age 86 on May 29, 1996.
For Zegunis, donating the signed banknote to the museum and connecting with the families involved brought a deep sense of satisfaction.
“It was such a chance moment … and it really means a lot to me,” he said. “It makes me happy to know that people are getting back the history instead of it just sitting with all the other junk in my basement.”
Initially, Zegunis offered to give the note to the families, but Brand suggested donating it to the B.C. Aviation Museum, based in Sidney, as part of a special display.
Brand said the museum recently initiated an education program for local students, and the historic banknote “is an interesting item for students, providing the opportunity for them to witness the positive outcome of a fellow student’s hobby” while referencing the sacrifices veterans made during the conflict overseas.
Zegunis has been collecting and trading currency as a hobby for the past eight years. He was inspired to collect world currencies by his Lithuanian grandfather, Andrejs Melbardis. Zegunis said his grandfather, now living with the family, is proud of his grandson’s hobby and philanthropy.
It was another interesting wartime connection for Brand. In 2017, while researching Commonwealth airmen lost on training missions from the Sidney wartime training base near his home, Brand connected the Canadian grandson of lost New Zealand airman Roy Hodge with the family he had never known in New Zealand, and eventually with the family of a 16-year-old Jewish heroine who had helped Hodge escape the Nazis after being shot down over Belgium in 1943.
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