Tears of joy: Chatham woman learns father’s war grave in good hands

Margaret (Horne) Allison shakes with excitement upon learning someone will care for her father’s grave in the Canadian War Cemetery at Adegem in Belgium.

The 88-year-old Chatham woman was just nine years old, living with her six siblings in an orphanage, when she received the devastating news her father, Sgt. Reginald Ernest Horne, was killed on Sept. 19, 1944 in Belgium at age 30. He was killed while serving with the Algonquin Regiment that battled the Germans on the shores of the Scheldt estuary to protect the port of Antwerp.

Excitement spreads across Allison’s face and tears of joy start to flow when she learns a 17-year-old Belgian girl has offered to take on this responsibility.

“I don’t know what to say,” Allison said.

Article content

This arrangement came about after Allison happened upon In Our served Fathers’ Footsteps, a not-for-profit immersive experience created by Karen Hunter that enables the descendants of those who in the Netherlands during the Second World War to gain a deeper understanding of their relative’s wartime experience.

Allison had two elderly brothers in Bruges, Belgium, who tended their father’s grave, but they have since passed way.

Hunter learned Allison was concerned there was nothing she could do to ensure someone would care for her father’s grave.

Thanks to a partnership with her organization, the Foundation Belgium Canada (VZW België-Canada) has arranged for Eliza Grammens to adopt Allison’s father’s grave, Hunter said.

Article content

The foundation’s goal is “to strengthen the bonds with the Canadian Liberators by giving each grave a ‘Peter’ (godfather) or a ‘Meter’ (godmother),” she said.

She added more than 500 Belgian citizens take care of 1,109 Canadian graves.

“It’s really considered an honor over there to do this,” Hunter said of caring for a military seriousness.

Even seven decades later, Allison still feels like that frightened nine-year-old girl when thinking about her father’s death.

Allison and her siblings were living at the former Francis Moore Shelter, once located on Park Avenue East in Chatham, when she learned her father was killed. There was no sympathy from those running the orphanage in delivering this devastating news.

Article content

“I remember screaming,” Allison said of hearing the shocking news.

The tragedy was made in more painful as she recalled a matron of the orphanage heartlessly yelling: “You’re dad’s not coming home and you’re not going home.”

For years Allison clung to the hope that her father’s death wasn’t true, believing stories of some men stealing dog tags from other soldiers.

“I believed that my dad was coming home, no matter what.”

At age 21, Allison said, “I had to finally say, ‘He’s not coming home.’”

She recalled her father coming by the orphanage many times while stationed at Basic Training Camp No. 12, once located on Tweedsmuir Avenue between Queen and Lacroix streets.

She told her father and other soldiers often marched by the orphanage.

Article content

“I can still see it today,” Allison said. “They would be tossing us oranges.”

She recalled being seven years old the last time she saw her father as she and her siblings sat under a tree at the orphanage visiting with him.

“I remember him saying he had a job to do, because there are some bad men, and when he comes home, we’re going back home,” Allison said. “And then, we never saw him after that.”

Those times her father visited were precious. She remembers thinking, “He’s mine.”

In awe of father in uniform, Allison remembers it seemed “he was 10-feet tall.”

Her memory of her father remains vivid.

“He’s alive as the day he sat at that tree.”

She believes her father’s desire to serve in country is hereditary.

Her father was only 18 months old when her grandfather, Pte. Fredrick Horne, died on Dec. 8, 1915 at age 21, from wounds suffered while a member of the 33rd Battalion serving with the 1st Battalion in the trenches in France during the First World War.

Article content

Pte. Horne is buried in the Bailleul Cemetery, near the Belgian border, in France.

Ironically, Allison’s youngest brother Ron was 18 months old when their father was killed.

“I try to imagine dad upon arriving in Europe … maybe walking close enough to his father’s graveyard to maybe stop and whisper to him … to let him know that he was following in his footsteps to help grant freedom to Canada,” Allison said.

After accepting her father’s death, Allison began her journey to learn about his service.

“I didn’t know what he was fighting for that he didn’t come home,” she said.

All she knew was it was a terrible war, but as a child she didn’t know the reason it was being fought.

Allison became fiercely proud of her father and grandfather and her other relative service to Canada.

Article content

“I didn’t grow up to be proud of anything, because you don’t have it, because we weren’t wanted by society,” she said.

She recalls her and others living at the shelter being prevented by families outside the orphanage from being friends with their children.

“If my father was here, we would have had friends, we would have been wanted,” she remembers thinking. “He gave his life and we were still not wanted.”

As she grew older, Allison would tell people they are enjoying the freedoms they have, because of the sacrifices her dad, grandfather and uncles made.

As Remembrance Day approaches, Allison her proud she’s made sure her children know the story of their grandfather and great-grandfather and other relatives’ service to Canada.

Article content

It is learning about his own father’s Second World War experiences that prompted Hunter to create In Our Fathers’ Footsteps.

Before planning the organization’s first immersive trip, she went to the Netherlands to do some research and was moved by the “Dutch gratitude” that remains decades later for Canadian soldiers.

The Guelph resident realized “other Second World War descendants needed to experience this ‘Dutch gratitude’ and that it was really much bigger than me.”

Hunter put the message out across Canada to ask if anyone wanted to join her on this “journey” and hundreds of people responded.

A trip was planned for May 2020 for the 75th anniversary of the Liberation of Holland, but was postponed to September 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Article content

“It was meant to be a one-time only event.”

But Hunter said it was such an overwhelming success, the Dutch people reached out to her last year, stating: “If we can bring this much joy to so many Canadians we have to do it again.”

Hunter said another trip is planned from April 27 to May 8, 2025 for the 80th Liberation of Holland celebrations. Details can be found at www.inourfathersfootsteps.com.

“We literally walk in the footsteps of Canadian troops in the fields and the forests and liberated villages.”

She added there are commemorations at war monuments and cemeteries along with doing many interesting activities with the local people.

“It’s not a tour, it’s an immersive experience and people come away from it really quite changed, they tell me,” Hunter said.

Allison has never been to see the graves of her father and grandfather and is not going on this trip due to finances and some health concerns, but she plans to follow the journey online.

She’s already there in spirit knowing a Belgian teen will be looking after her father’s war grave.

“I want to pretend that maybe it’s me doing it,” she said.

“My dad’s soul is laying there in that grave,” Allison said. “I’m that little girl putting that flower there. My dad knows that I’m there.”

[email protected]

Article content