Swift Current Museum unveils new banners to honour veterans
Four new banners in honour of veterans have been added to the existing banners on display in downtown Swift Current leading up to Remembrance Day.
The official unveiling of the new banners took place at the Swift Current Museum, Oct. 25. The event was attended by family members of the four veterans, who all served during the Second World War. Two of them did not return from their service.
“The veteran banner project focuses on our community’s veterans and service members who have unselfishly enlisted to protect and preserve our way of life from past to present,” Swift Current Mayor Al Bridal said during the unveiling. “When the realization of their sacrifice hits closer to home, it elicits our emotions, our gratitude and awe and these emotions in turn trigger remembrance. This is how we help to create a legacy of respect.”
The Swift Current Museum initiated the Honour our Veterans Banner Program in 2016 to give recognition to veterans in a meaningful and public way. Museum Director Melissa Shaw noted the four new banners will bring the total number of banners unveiled since the start of the program to 45.
“We’re so thrilled to be able to do the banner program,” she said after the unveiling. “It allows not only families to remember their family members who had served as veterans, but it also allows for us to remind our community, our youth of the importance of things like Remembrance Day, keeping it at the forefront and remembering those who fought for the freedoms that we have today.”
This was her first banner unveiling since her recent appointment as museum director. She read out biographical details about the four veterans during the ceremony.
“For me it was very emotional, reading the stories of the servicemen, two of which lost their lives at the war,” she said. “It was very touching and I’m very honoured to be the one who was able to read their stories to their families today.”
Each full colour, double-sided banner honours a specific service person with a connection to the Swift Current area. The details on a banner include the name and photograph of the person being honoured, the war or era when they served, their branch of service, and the name of the sponsor.
A banner can be sponsored at a cost of $150 per banner. It will be displayed for three consecutive years during the Remembrance Day period, and thereafter it will be returned to a sponsor as a keepsake.
“We already have families submitting applications for next year,” she said. “So it’s a program that’s going to continue to grow and we couldn’t be more thrilled about that.”
Banners are installed on lamp posts in and around Memorial Park in the period leading up to Remembrance Day. The return of banners to sponsors help to create space for new banners, because there are not enough lamp posts for all the banners created since 2016.
“We hang them for three years and then if we have room, we’ll allow them to be hung for an extra year,” she explained.
Swift Current resident David Stewardson sponsored the banner of his half-brother Sgt. Eldon Sidney Stewardson, who died in action while serving with a British army tank battalion in Belgium during the Second World War.
“This is a good program,” he said. “I’m very pleased they did this and they invited me so I could be here. … I will certainly go and look to see when this one get hung up and take pictures of it and send it to my brother, who is a half-brother to Eldon.”
His intention is to give the banner to somebody in the family when it is returned to him after three years. The banner photograph of Eldon has been in David’s possession for many years.
“I’m very proud of him,” he said. “I had that picture in a frame and it hangs in my bedroom, and I look at it every day. So I’m lucky I’ve got the picture.”
David cannot remember his half-brother, because he was too young during the time Eldon joined the Army and went to war.
“I didn’t remember him, but he knew me, because he would come home on leave to see his family and I was there and then he went overseas,” he said.
Eldon was transferred to Europe after
the D-Day landing, where he served on the front lines with a British Army tank battalion. He was killed in Belgium on Nov. 1, 1944.
“It’s interesting, I remember the day he died, because my father came out and said Eldon’s dead and I remember that,” David recalled. “I was three years old, and I can remember that. I don’t remember other things, but I can remember that. He said ‘Eldon’s dead’ and my mother said ‘Oh dear.’”
Stewardson Lake in northern Saskatchewan is named in honour of Eldon as part of a commemorative naming program in the province.
“I flew up there in 1967, part of my centennial project,” David said. “We landed on the lake, my brother-in-law and myself and the pilot. We spent a couple of hours there and I took some pictures.”
The family of Wally Shirley sponsored his banner. He served with the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War and carried out duties as an electrician on two ships that sailed to various destinations around the world.
Siblings Nancy and Janice Shirley attended the unveiling of their father’s banner with other family members.
“It’s a great honour,” Nancy said. “Truly a great honour that he’s been recognized for his service to our country. The whole family is very, very grateful for this honour.”
He enlisted in 1943 at the age of seventeen-and-a-half years old. They noted that he never spoke about his service during the war.
“He looked towards the future,” Janice said. “He was always about positive thinking. He didn’t look to the past. He looked towards the future.”
Nancy added that during those few occasions when he did refer to the war years, he talked about the ports they visited.
“It was always about his trips through different ports,” she said. “He travelled so much on ships. He especially talked a lot about the Arctic, going through up there, and he also talked a lot about Hong Kong.”
Below are details about the service of the four veterans honoured by the new banners (information provided by the Swift Current Museum).
John Burnett:
He was born on Nov. 9, 1919 to Walter and Jane Burnett. His siblings were Jean, Walter, David, Agnes and Isobel. He attended Swinton School, a small country school located southwest of Swift Current.
He enlisted for military service in Regina in 1941. He joined the 6th Anti-Tank Regiment at Petawawa, Ontario, and sailed from Debert Camp on the Queen Mary to England. He saw duty in Belgium, Holland, France and Germany. He was discharged in 1946 and headed home to Saskatchewan.
He farmed in the summer and did electrical work in the winter – a trade he learned in the army. He never talked about the war, but he kept a large collection of red poppies in his desk. He married Lillian Targerson and they raised five boys – Lester, Lyle, Douglas, Dean, and Garth.