Cemetery crosses memorialize veterans

NEEPAWA — Placed on veteran headstones in more than 10 cemeteries in the Westman region are nearly 2,000 small wooden crosses. They are painted white with a vivid red poppy placed on the intersecting pieces.

Six years ago, Robert Ferguson, a longtime member of the Royal Canadian Legion in Neepawa, began making and placing each cross at the base of a veteran’s headstone in the Riverside Cemetery in Neepawa.

As his passion project grew, community partners got involved to help build and paint crosses or make poppies to place on them.

Now, cemeteries in McCreary, Reston, Riding Mountain, Killarney, Pipestone, Minnedosa and other communities all have their own crosses memorializing the men and women from rural Manitoba who served in the First and Second World War.

Ferguson, who said he has “always liked the legion,” first joined in Gilbert Plains in 1972 and then became part of the Neepawa legion branch in 1975.

As someone who knew many war veterans, he said he started the project because he wanted to pay tribute to the people he knew.

“I feel strongly about recognizing these guys,” Ferguson said, while walking through the veterans’ section of the Riverside Cemetery.

“I respect what our veterans did,” he said. “They did a lot for our country.”

Many of the white crosses are placed on headstones that will say if the deceased person there is a veteran, but many are placed on grave markers that don’t have that information.

“There’s people I’ll miss because there’ll be nothing to indicate that they were a veteran,” Ferguson said.

Through small-town records and word of mouth, Ferguson has identified, written and published more than 500 biographies about war veterans from rural Manitoba that might have otherwise gone unrecognized.

Through his research, more people buried in the cemetery have received a cross that identifies them as a veteran, bringing the total number of crosses in Neepawa to almost 600.

“And so, when I’m finished, like the young ones coming up, they don’t have any idea of who were the First War guys. They have no idea who they were, and so when I’m gone, this will be gone,” Ferguson said.

He added that part of the reason for his project is to help engage young people with acts of remembrance.

“If the kids keep coming out, you will keep having a Remembrance Day. If the kids stop coming out, you’ve got nothing,” Ferguson said.

For the first time since the project started, Girl Guides in Neepawa made roughly 80 felt poppies to glue onto some of the white crosses this year.

Ferguson said he first became interested in wartime history when he was a student growing up in Gladstone.

“My teacher in Gladstone was a bomber pilot, and he married a British girl over there, and then he went to Oxford, became a history teacher, got his PhD in history,” he said.

“Then the silly nut came to Gladstone and wanted to be a farmer, and this farmland is very sandy, and so he ended up teaching.

“He was my school principal (and) my history teacher. So, because he did all his history at Oxford, it was very, very interesting.”

Ferguson later became a school principal and history teacher in Neepawa before retiring in 2004.

He has been awarded three medals for his community service throughout his life — two from Queen Elizabeth II, including the Diamond Jubilee Medal, and most recently, the King Charles III Coronation Medal.

Ferguson has helped organize Remembrance Day ceremonies in Neepawa and volunteered with the Neepawa Air Cadets, the Royal Canadian Artillery Museum and Veterans Affairs Canada.

As he walks through the cemetery, Ferguson shares not only the name of a veteran, but where their family is from, what the person did before and after they served, or, if they died in service, where they were or how it happened.

Ferguson tells the story of two brothers who were captured and shot by the German army on June 8, 1944, and the life of a nursing sister who survived a torpedo attack while on a ship in the Mediterranean Sea.

He also recalls specific details, like how Second World War veteran Ernie Briese worked for the British American Oil Company (later known as Gulf Oil Canada) in Brandon, where the Canadian Tire is now.

“They were good people. They’re a generation that we’re sadly missing right now,” Ferguson said.

“We miss the backbone that the First War guys and the Second War guys had. They did a lot for our country, and we don’t have them anymore,” he said.

Ferguson said he’s still reading through community history books finding more names and hopes that more communities will pick up the project and begin making their own crosses to pay homage to the people who served their country.

» rgerrard@brandonsun.com