U.K. bidder pays $550K for Sask. soldier’s medal
OTTAWA • The Canadian War Museum lost a bid to keep a rare Second World War medal in Canada on Wednesday, with a private U.K. collector paying $550,000 for the Victoria Cross at an auction in London, England.
The medal, awarded to Canadian Lt.-Col. David Currie, was purchased by an unknown buyer who plans to take the medal out of Canada.
The collector bought Currie’s VC and an assortment of other medals and memorabilia at a public sale at auction house Dix Noonan Webb.
The buyer must also pay a 20-per-cent seller’s commission, pushing the total price to $660,000.
Yasmine Mingay, director of public affairs for the Canadian War Museum, confirmed that the museum took part in the auction, “but we were not the successful bidder.”
The auction house said Wednesday that the buyer intends to apply for a Canadian Cultural Property Export Permit, which is needed before the medals would be allowed to leave Canada.
The medals are currently in a safe-deposit box at a bank in Kemptville, Ont., in the care of Tanya Ursual, an antiquities dealer who acted as the auction house’s Canadian representative.
“The buyer is a private U.K.-based collector. That tells me it’s not a museum,” Ursual said. “If it’s a private collector, my guess is they’re going to stay quiet about it.”
Currie, of Sutherland, Sask., was a major in the 29th Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment (The South Alberta Regiment), when he landed in France a few weeks after the D-Day invasion.
In August 1944, Allied forces had encircled tens of thousands of German soldiers in an area known as the Falaise Pocket. Currie was given a handful of tanks and supporting infantry and ordered to seal a gap in the Allied lines to cut off the Germans’ escape.
The Canadians held the line, killing and wounding 800 enemy soldiers and taking 2,100 more prisoner.
“Throughout three days and nights of fierce fighting, Major Currie’s gallant conduct and contempt for danger set a magnificent example to all ranks of the force under his command,” his Victoria Cross citation reads.
A famous photograph of Currie, pistol in hand, with captured German soldiers, was described by historian C.P. Stacey “as close as we are ever likely to come to a photograph of a man winning the Victoria Cross.”
Currie was the only Canadian to earn a VC in the D-Day and Normandy campaigns and one of only 12 Canadians so honoured during the Second World War. The simple bronze cross on a purple ribbon is the Commonwealth’s highest honour for bravery in battle.
Currie was later named Sergeant of Arms of the House of Commons by prime minister John Diefenbaker.
Currie died in Ottawa in 1986. In 1989, his widow, Isabel, sold the VC to a private collector in Canada. That collector cared for it until this summer, when he decided to put it up for auction.
Once the export permit is applied for, the Department of Canadian Heritage will set a period of between two and six months during which a Canadian buyer or institution will have a chance to buy the medals. If no one does, the buyer will be allowed to take the medals outside Canada.
“In that time it becomes incumbent upon them to find a Canadian buyer who is prepared to pay that price,” Ursual said.
MAJOR CURRIE’S GALLANT CONDUCT AND CONTEMPT FOR DANGER SET A MAGNIFICENT EXAMPLE TO ALL RANKS ... UNDER HIS COMMAND. — VICTORIA CROSS CITATION