For over 50 years, six Veterans from WWI who’ve been lying in unmarked graves in Courtenay Civic Cemetery, now have headstones to identify them and their military service to Canada in the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
The recently installed headstones, are a total of 14 that have been installed in the past two years in the cemetery for our Veterans. Thirty-two applications have been submitted to the Last Post Fund by Volunteer Researcher and Courtenay resident, Ted Usher for Veterans lying without headstones in the Courtenay Cemetery. Additional applications and installations have occurred in the Sandwick and Cumberland Cemeteries as well.
Usher, a Veteran of the CAF, New Westminster Police, a volunteer at the Comox Air Force Museum, and is the current President of the Last Post Fund, B.C./Yukon Branch, has been a volunteer researcher for five years now.
The Last Post Fund (LPF) is a national Veterans organization that has been in existence since 1908 when funds were raised by a Montreal hospital orderly to provide a dignified funeral and burial for a Boar War Veteran who had passed away in the hospital. Since that time, the LPF has provided funds for thousands of Veterans to have that dignified funeral and burial across Canada.
The Unmarked Grave Program and Indigenous Veterans Initiative are two programs the LPF offers as part of its Lost Veteran’s Initiative. Volunteer researchers and others search for our Veterans lying in unmarked graves across Canada in an attempt to ensure they receive the Veteran marker they so rightly deserve.
The LPF is funded by Veterans Affairs Canada and a small portion of the funds go to full time paid office staff where much of the funding pays for the funeral & burial program, Lost Veterans Initiative along with the National Field of Honour in Pointe-Claire PQ, where over 22,000 Veterans are interred.
Usher’s efforts in the Comox Valley and around B.C. has resulted in over 180 headstone applications being submitted to the LPF. His research has identified 876 Veterans in Courtenay Cemetery, 150 in Cumberland Cemetery and 111 in Sandwick. He and the other B.C./Yukon Branch volunteer researchers have submitted hundreds of applications for headstones this past few years.
Now, Private’s Grieve, Pritchard, Shotbolt, Dyer, March and Campbell have finally been forever recognized for their service at their final resting place.
For further information about the Last Post Fund and its programs, check out their website at www.lastpostfund.ca or contact Ted Usher at tedusher@gmail.com.
