Several weeks ago, the folks at Canadian Geographic reached out to us.  It seems that they were working on a short one-minute educational video to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Canadian Citizenship Act as a part of their GeoMinute series, and had requested permission to use a 1945 photo of the Dieppe cemetery in the video to explain that the path to citizenship began in 1946 when Paul Martin Senior, while visiting Canada’s military cemetery in Dieppe, noticed that the graves of Canadian soldiers were identified as British. He believed these men should be recognized as Canadians and introduced the Act to establish Canadian citizenship separate from Britain.  As the photograph was taken prior to 1949, it was in the public domain (i.e., not copyrighted), but the good folks at Canadian Geographic still reached out to us to ask for our permission to make use of it.

The video was posted on Friday and has been embedded below.  Be sure to check it out.

Also, notice the photo credit that reads:

Canadian Cemetery in Dieppe, February 1945. Courtesy of Ron Watkins & the Royal Canadian Legion US Branch 25.

The late Ron Watkins was a proud World war II veteran of the Merchant Marine.  Ron and his wife Ann were both active, longtime members of the branch.