Close to half the residents at Veterans Memorial Lodge served Canada in the military, but many of their stories have never been told.
With this year marking both the 80th anniversary of D-Day — coming up June 6 — and the 100th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Air Force, a collection of the veterans’ stories is being compiled in the Times Colonist “to honour those who are still alive and to honour those who have left us,” said Mandy Parker, vice-president of philanthropy and communications for Broadmead Care, which operates the lodge.
“We think it’s a really nice reminder to people.”
Stories will run each weekend, beginning Saturday, before being presented in a June 8 insert called “Heroes Among Us.”
The 225 residents of the lodge include just under 100 veterans, some of whom were in the Second World War or Korean War.
The stories are also a way to raise awareness of the Rooted in Care Campaign, a fundraiser to upgrade the courtyards and garden areas at the lodge.
The lodge has nine courtyards where residents can enjoy the outdoors in safety and even get their hands dirty in the garden beds.
“They’re especially important for people living with dementia because they’re close-in spaces,” Parker said. “They’re very natural and lovely environments.”
The goal is to raise about $600,000 over three years to upgrade the courtyards and gardens. More than $130,000 has been donated so far, enough to complete work on three of the courtyards.
Former Times Colonist columnist Jack Knox, who still writes the occasional piece for the paper, has stepped up to support the campaign.
Of all the stories he has come across through the years, Knox counts the tales of veterans as some of the most memorable.
A few are included in his 2018 book On the Rocks: Islanders I Will Never Forget.
“Here’s the thing,” Knox said in a recent interview. “There was no John Wayne, flag-waving bravado with any of these guys. They grew up in the Depression, they went straight into war, lost people they loved and just came out the other side as quiet, humble people who basically kept their stories to themselves.”
He said he was concerned the veterans’ stories would die with them.
“Most of them wouldn’t even talk about the war until late in life. Then it became like a race against time to get their stories down before they were gone.”
Take Rudi Hoensen, for example, a big lodge supporter who died in 2020 at the age of 96.
Knox marvels at the way Hoenson approached the world, despite what he faced as a soldier.
He was taken prisoner during the Second World War as an 18-year-old and was a POW for over three years — which left him emaciated.
“A day after an air raid in which the guy next to him was killed, they were cleaning up from that, he looked up and the Nagasaki nuclear bomb went off over his head,” Knox said.
Yet Knox described Hoenson as “one of the most happy-go-lucky, contented people you would ever meet.”
He once said to Hoenson that he had all sorts of reasons to be bitter, and asked him why that wasn’t the case.
“He said: ‘Hey, I got to come to Canada and I got to meet my wife. What else do you want?’ ”
Hoenson did well financially in his life and loved to give his money to a range of causes, Knox said.
Another veteran’s story Knox likes to tell is about the late Mac Colquhoun, a lodge resident who helped to build escape tunnels while in a POW camp.
“He stood in his room and showed me how he used to use strings in his pockets to release tunnel dirt from little bags hidden inside his pant legs.”
A similar tactic was used by POWs in the movie The Great Escape to get rid of the dirt removed during tunnel building.
The movie is about an actual escape from a POW camp next to the one Colquhoun was in, while the real-life escape from Colquhoun’s camp is depicted in the movie The Wooden Horse.
Discover the stories of veterans living at Veterans Memorial Lodge, a Broadmead Care Home. Visit broadmeadcare.com/people-and-stories.
