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By Sarah Forrest
Sarah Forrest spent a few weeks with the Legion as part of the journalism program at Ottawa’s Carleton University.

My maternal great grandfather, George Peter Lapierre, served five years in the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals (RCCS) between 1939 and 1945, during the Second World War.

In that period, the RCCS grew significantly, as did the rest of the Canadian Armed Forces. While we don’t know exactly where George spent most of his time, members of the RCCS were stationed with all divisions of the CAF, promoting effective communications across all theatres of war. Then known as signalmen, they played a significant role in ensuring military operations were carried out successfully.

George earned the 1939-1945 Star, the France and Germany Star, the War Medal 1939-1945, the Defence Medal, and the Canadian Volunteer Service Medal with a silver bar.  

No one in my family knows very much about his service. He passed away in 1971, when my mother was two. Everyone says he didn’t like to talk about it. When my mother would try to ask, my great grandmother would say: “There’s nothing good to say about the war.”

It was in the past, and that’s where it was meant to stay.

My connection to Remembrance has always felt distant. I knew my great grandfather had served in the Second World War, but I never knew him. I knew the importance of his service and sacrifice, but it wasn’t until recently that I’d truly considered what it meant.

While I didn’t know my great grandfather, I knew the love of his life. My great grandmother, Elsie, would live nearly another 50 years after her husband passed away. She died in 2018, at 103. As my connection to my great-grandfather, she is my connection to Remembrance.

She wrote to him every week he was away.

In a journal given to her by my mother, Elsie reflects “He was then my boyfriend. I faithfully wrote to him each week and sent a food box each month.”

“What could you possibly have to tell that boy?!”  her mother, my great great grandmother, would ask.

I wonder too. We aren’t sure where the postcards between George and Elsie ended up all these years later. What we do have, is postcards from George to his family when he was stationed somewhere in France.

To his sister, in 1944, he writes, “Elsie was telling me all about the earthquake…”

To his mother, he writes about the money he’d sent home, “for when I get back.”

These mentions of Elsie, and the actions George was taking to prepare for their future upon his return made me realize the love we both held – and I still hold for her.

So, while I didn’t know George, in a way, I feel as though I did. George and I shared a love for Elsie, and she is my bridge to him, and to Remembrance.

The hands that wrote him letters each week are the same hands that would hold mine, shaking her head in disapproval as she saw I’d been biting my nails. The arms that would wrap around me each time I went to visit her, are the same arms that wrapped around him when he returned from his service. Worlds apart, but connected by the same woman.

I knew my great grandmother well, and I saw the way she carried herself with poise and grace. It doesn’t surprise me that Elsie faithfully wrote to her then-boyfriend every week. She was a smart, practical, and devoted woman.

I think of George, the man I never knew, a son, a brother, a husband, a father, a grandfather, a soldier boy, and I think of the love of his life, whom I did know.

My love for her, and her love for him, weave together the thread of a memory that transcends time.

As more Second World War veterans continue to pass away, it’s important that their memory lives on. Even though we may not have personally met them, we may meet those who did. I look at his army picture and I see pieces of his children, my grandmother, Jill, and my great uncle, Jack (John). George’s life lives on in his children, being passed down to his grandchildren, great grandchildren, and even great great grandchildren. We are all stewards of his memory, and of Remembrance.