Rannoch ceremony to mark 80 years since six Second World War names added to cenotaph
By Galen Simmons
Eighty years after six Blanshard Township men who never returned home from the Second World War were formally added to the Rannoch Cenotaph, the community will gather once again to remember not only their names, but the people behind them.
The Township of Perth South and community partners will host a special commemorative ceremony at the Rannoch Cenotaph at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 25, marking the 80th anniversary of a welcome-home and memorial service held there July 7, 1946.
During that original ceremony, the names of six local men killed during the Second World War – Gordon W. Barnett, Norman Evans, Alvin Heard, Albert Martin, Gordon McKay and Clarence Stevens – were added to the cenotaph, joining those from the First World War and Boer War already memorialized there.
According to an original order of service, the parents of the six fallen men were presented with plaques from the township, while returning servicemen and women were presented with rings.
The Oct. 25 ceremony will include a piper, prayer and other elements inspired by a traditional remembrance ceremony, though organizer Gordon Barnett said it is intended specifically to mark the anniversary of the 1946 dedication rather than replace the community’s Remembrance Day observances. Perth-Wellington MP John Nater will serve as the main speaker and share some of the history of the cenotaph.
For Barnett, a member of the organizing committee, the effort to tell the stories behind the names engraved in stone is deeply personal.
His uncle and namesake, Gordon W. Barnett, was a member of the First Canadian Parachute Battalion who was killed in combat in Germany on March 24, 1945, shortly after his 20th birthday. He was later buried with other Canadian war dead in the Netherlands.
Barnett’s uncle was the first person whose story was shared during one of the committee’s late-October ceremonies two years ago, an initiative inspired by similar efforts elsewhere to put faces, families and lives to the names on cenotaphs.
“They were fathers, sons and so on, where they went to school, playing sports and that sort of thing,” Barnett said of the details that can easily disappear with time.
His own research began through Faces to Graves, an organization in the Netherlands working to document the lives of Canadian soldiers buried there. Barnett gathered letters, newspaper clippings and family artifacts connected to his uncle, allowing him to learn about the young man beyond his military service.
“Getting to read the letters, you got to appreciate him as a person,” Barnett said, describing correspondence about girls his uncle met, time spent with friends and other pieces of an ordinary young life interrupted by war.
That connection is becoming increasingly important as generations pass and families move away, Barnett said.
“Some of those families are starting to move away now,” he said. “There’s not the connections like there was. So, I think this will help a lot of people realize they may be, you know, one or two degrees of separation from some of these names.”
Perth South Mayor Sue Orr, who first brought forward the idea of marking the anniversary, said keeping those connections alive is the heart of the ceremony.
“I feel it’s important to keep this history alive and share the family connections,” Orr said. “We owe a great debt to those who served in all the wars and it’s the least we can do to honour the names on the cenotaph.”
The St. Marys Museum will also take part in the ceremony, bringing artifacts connected to the 1946 commemoration and the people it honoured.
Comments