The Odyssey Begins
After an overnight, I will venture to the eastern part of Holland, to a little town called Almelo and will hopefully also visit the Canadian cemetery at Holten where Canadian troops who died in the liberation of Holland are buried. The next day I will head to the area of the Scheldt Estuary where the Battle of the Scheldt occurred.
My father was in the Corps of Signals in the Canadian Army during World War II. Like many fathers who came home, he spoke little about what he experienced. I have a packet of letters and postcards that he kept with him in the final months of the war and after the war was over. I will try to stand in some of the same places.
He joined in 1941, and later trained on the Isle of Man. I have some recollection of him speaking about Dieppe but as nearly as I can determine he would still have been in training at the time. He was in Normandy on D-Day +1, June 7, 1944. I will be visiting Juno Beach and Caen.At the end of this week I will travel from Amsterdam to Paris where I will meet another of my natural siblings. We will have some time together. I also hope to see a few things in Paris and environs. My patriotism makes me want to venture also to see the Canadian monument at Vimy Ridge.
In early June, I will travel to Ireland and visit friends in the west of the country before joining our Toronto contingent at the International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin. Shortly after the Congress I will return home, just in time to pack and move to Oshawa.
So I will try to share with my words and some images my experiences on this journey, but the music will be one that is inner, a time to listen to the music of the soul.
