{"id":9422,"date":"2025-11-10T10:38:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T14:38:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/?p=9422"},"modified":"2025-11-10T14:57:37","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T18:57:37","slug":"we-will-remember-them-booklet-website-commemorate-north-queens-war-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/2025\/11\/10\/we-will-remember-them-booklet-website-commemorate-north-queens-war-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"‘We will remember them’: Booklet, website commemorate North Queens war dead"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Carol Smith is the chair of the North Queens Remembrance Day Committee and chaplain with the North Queens Fire Association. (Rick Conrad)<\/p><\/div>\n

When people in North Queens gather on Tuesday to commemorate the community\u2019s war veterans, they\u2019ll have a little help from a booklet and website honouring those who didn\u2019t return.<\/span><\/p>\n

The project is a collaboration between the North Queens Remembrance Day Committee, the North Queens Heritage Society and air force veteran Chris Charlton.<\/span><\/p>\n

They\u2019ve created a booklet called North Queens: We Will Remember Them. It profiles the 33 service members from the area who died in the two world wars and the Korean conflict.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think the importance is that these young men from North Queens were very committed to serving their country and to doing what was needed in their time,” says Carol Smith, chair of the Remembrance Day committee and chaplain of the North Queens Fire Association. <\/span><\/p>\n

“And when you read the profiles, you just see what a huge change it must have been for them to leave rural Nova Scotia and go fight in faraway countries and just put their lives on the line. So it’s the enormity of their sacrifice that we need to remember. <\/span>And I think that’s what Remembrance Day is all about, is realizing that we’re all called upon to want the greater good and to remember what they did for peace and what is it that we can do in our time and place. It’s just a great inspiration to me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Charlton, who was a Sea King pilot for 28 years and is a Gulf War veteran, approached the committee last year about a project he was working on to commemorate the war dead from North Queens.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Maitland Bridge native wanted to profile each of the fallen veterans listed on the cenotaph in Caledonia.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we quickly got the committee together and started working with Chris,” Smith says. “Chris has done an amazing amount of work researching the lives of those whose names are on the cenotaph in North Queens, and he deserves a lot of credit for that because it’s been a labour of love for him.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The committee received a $3,000 grant from Veterans Affairs Canada to print 250 booklets to distribute to families of the fallen. There will also be copies handed out at this year\u2019s Remembrance Day service in Caledonia. Charlton will be at the ceremony.<\/span><\/p>\n

The booklet includes a full profile and photos of each of the servicemen. There\u2019s even more information on the North Queens Remembers website<\/a>, including a treasure trove of archival documents.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think what makes them so very interesting is the details that Chris has put in, where each person was born, their family, where they enlisted, how they served, tragically where they died, where they’re buried, how their families were notified. It all brings to life their commitment and their sacrifice.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Though Charlton wrote the profiles and compiled the documents, it was a community effort, including members of the former Royal Canadian Legion branch in Caledonia and the volunteer fire department.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPart of it is to honour these people. And it would be easy to let the passage of time dim our memories. \u2026 A lot of the men were buried in foreign fields. And a lot of people have not been able to go and see the cemeteries. So this is just one way to connect us to the amazing stories for each of these people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The project was also a personal one for Smith. Her father Mervyn Dunn was a veteran of the Second World War. He returned home, but he didn\u2019t talk much about his experiences overseas.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe was in France, Italy, Holland, all those places, and he never talked about it. He never talked about it. Many veterans are like that, and I regret, I really regret, that I didn’t ask him more. \u2026 But, you know, so many people have the same story, that their fathers didn’t talk about it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At the Remembrance Day service in Caledonia on Tuesday, members of the committee will read the profile of Private Joseph Colp, whose brother Simeon is still alive and living in a nursing home in Lunenburg. They also plan to give one of the commemorative booklets to him.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think this is a really good profile to read because it really highlights the sacrifice of so many. And Chris has mentioned in his profile that where he is buried, the cemetery contains the graves of those who died during the fighting at Moro River and Ortona. Today, there are 1,615 graves in the cemetery, of which 1,375 are Canadian.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Smith says the committee has also given about 20 copies to the North Queens Community School, where teachers plan to use it in class projects. She hopes the document will inspire other groups to do similar research on veterans in their area.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe used to have them around so that we could talk to them, but now we don’t. So I think these stories need to be told. And so if it could be an inspiration, that would be great.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Remembrance Day service in Caledonia is on Tuesday at 10:45 a.m. at the North Queens Fire Hall.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Copies of the booklet are available for public viewing at the North Queens Heritage House Museum in Caledonia. You can visit the North Queens Remembers website<\/a> at <\/span>https:\/\/www.northqueensremembers.ca<\/span><\/a> .<\/span><\/p>\n

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Remembrance Day services around Queens County<\/strong><\/p>\n

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A list of 2025 Remembrance Day services in Queens County.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When people in North Queens gather on Tuesday to commemorate the community\u2019s war veterans, they\u2019ll have a little help from a booklet and website honouring those who didn\u2019t return. The project is a collaboration between the North Queens Remembrance Day Committee, the North Queens Heritage Society and air force veteran Chris Charlton. They\u2019ve created a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,5],"tags":[358,3549,3554,3558,3552,3372,3553,29,2058,3560,3559,3561,3555,3557,49,452,3551,112,3550,3556],"class_list":["post-9422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-news","category-news-posts","tag-caledonia","tag-carol-smith","tag-cenotaph","tag-chris-charlton","tag-first-world-war","tag-history","tag-korean-conflict","tag-north-queens","tag-north-queens-fire-association","tag-north-queens-heritage-house-museum","tag-north-queens-heritage-society","tag-north-queens-remembers","tag-north-queens-remembrance-day-committee","tag-north-queens-we-will-remember-them","tag-queens-county","tag-remembrance-day","tag-second-world","tag-veterans","tag-war-dead","tag-war-veterans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9422"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9430,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9422\/revisions\/9430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}