STEPHEN J. THORNE

Recognizing Indigenous veterans: Foundation tracks down lost graves

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

For Métis veteran Floyd Power, trekking across Canada’s North searching for the lost graves of Indigenous veterans has become a life’s work.

Based in Yellowknife, the retired warrant officer finds no greater satisfaction than uncovering unmarked or incomplete graves, tracking down names, interviewing families, Rangers and Elders, and exploring service histories.

The payoff comes a year or more down the road when families, colleagues and communities gather to pay their respects as a familiar grey granite headstone—usually bearing appropriate Indigenous iconography—is placed on a plot, finally granting an oft-long-departed veteran their due, in perpetuity.

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The pied piper of Ancre Heights

STORY BY PAIGE JASMINE GILMAR

Throughout James Cleland Richardson service, he breathed life onto First World War battlefields by playing songs on his bagpipes.

None of his tunes, however, held such stock as those that he performed on the front lines during the Battle of Ancre Heights in early October 1916. His actions not only helped inspired his company to escape the shell holes of Regina Trench and attack the Germans, but earned him the Victoria Cross as well.

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