Captain William Arthur Peel Durie died near Hill 70 in France in late December 1917. [LAC]

Undying love, Part 2: A grieving mother secrets her Great War soldier son’s remains home to Canada

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

Three years later to the day of Captain William Arthur Peel Durie’s death, a soldier wrote Durie’s mother Anna to tell her details of how “Bill” died as he made his way along the communication trench a half-hour into the attack.

“In December we were ordered to the Trenches in a very wicked part of the line just North of ‘Lens,’” W.H. Edwards wrote in 1920, “and on December 29, 1917, the ‘Hun’ placed a very heavy Gunfire ‘barrage’ on our front, resulting in Bills’ [sic] men catching it very heavy.

“As usual, he was out in it all, encouraging his men, when he could have been lying in his dugout under cover, but not him, out he went, collected the few men left, and stayed with them, until his sergeant remonstrated with him to get below, he refused to leave and was struck down, resulting in the loss of the biggest man the Battalion ever had.”

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Historian Debbie Jiang poses with photos of Japanese-Canadian WW I veterans Hikotaro Koyanagi and Kazuo Harada whose names were added to the cenotaph in Richmond, B.C., in October 2024. [Courtesy Debbie Jiang]

Forgotten Japanese-Canadian soldiers added to Richmond, B.C., cenotaph

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

Richmond, B.C., historian Debbie Jiang used to gaze upon the local cenotaph in traffic. “Every time I drove by,” she said to Legion Magazine, “I’d stop at a red light on No. 3 Road. There, I’d look at the side displaying the First World War. It always got me wondering if there could potentially be missing names.”

She was right on at least two counts—and potentially, indeed likely, more.

Japanese-Canadian soldiers Hikotaro Koyanagi and Kazuo Harada fought and died within nine months of each other during the Great War. Both adorned the uniform of a country that didn’t allow them to vote, that denied them the equal rights afforded to a sizable proportion of white compatriots, and treated them like second-class citizens—or frequently, worse. Yet die for Canada they did.

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