Please Remember
This Remembrance Day Sunday my family will be in London with my grandmother.
She will be laying a wreath at the London cenotaph
in honour of the Hong Kong veterans.
I will be remembering not only the men and women who did so much for our country, but will also be there to pay tribute to…and remember my grandpa.
Winston Ross Cunningham.
To me he’s grandpa.
To our country he was Lt Col. Cunningham..
With my mom just two weeks old, he went off to war.
He arrived in Hong Kong as a Captain with the Canadian Dental Corps .. then soon after was in a prison camp for almost four years.
He came back.. scrawny…but he came back.
He came back to be a grandfather to me and my sister… a man who didn’t talk much about those long days as a POW..
Instead he would talk politics at the dining room table.
He loved to talk about former Prime Ministers… and American Presidents.
This was my grandfather - the man who would take us to Springbank Park to go on the merry-go-round.
He would go out to his garage..and sit in his car in London..just to get better reception on his radio to hear me on the radio here in Kitchener. He was so proud of us.
My Grandpa with the sparkling blue eyes would just sit and hold my hand and talk for hours….and smile.
I miss him badly.
Some years ago.. when my grandfather was still with us, my grandparents sent some items from his POW days to the Canadian War Museum.
At the old site.. there was an entire area devoted to the Hong Kong Vets.
Now at the new location.. a beautiful building that must be visited in Ottawa, there is just one section of one wall devoted to their long stay.
The story is still important today.
Last Christmas, my grandma handed me a bulging envelope of paperwork she had copied from her trunk in the basement.
It was the telegrams… official government correspondence..and my grandpa’s love letters.
There were some years my grandma didn’t know if he was alive.
She says she waited so long to share these letters with us.. because she thought they might be ” too
racy”. I can tell you they are lovely and tender.
I can’t tell you what a gift this was.
From his sweet words to his wife.. to the letters that did make it out of the camp to a daughter who would not know him until she was almost four.
This Sunday I will remember Winston Ross Cunningham..
I will remember those that didn’t come back.
Thank you to our vets, and thank you to our soldiers in different parts of the world today…
Please wear your poppy.
lisa