Metis veterans receive apology
Minister acknowledges shabby treatment after return from war
In what’s likely to be the last major funding announcement in Regina before the expected start of the federal election campaign on Wednesday, the government tried to make things right with Metis veterans who served in the Second World War.
On Thursday at the Regina branch of the Royal Canadian Legion, federal Veterans Affairs Minister Lawrence Macaulay presented a $20,000 cheque to one of the last surviving Metis veterans, 93-year-old Norman Goodon.
It’s part of a $30-million package of federal compensation to address long-standing grievances that Metis people were denied appropriate benefits and support after they returned home from the war.
Macaulay said the soldiers served valiantly, honouring their families and communities. But he acknowledged that they later faced “prejudice” and “poverty.”
“They left this country not knowing the enemy they would face nor the country or the people they would have to defend,” Macaulay told a packed room. “They were nonetheless instrumental in Canada’s action to protect basic rights and freedoms around the globe.
“We apologize that the benefits offered the veterans after the war were not designed to meet the needs of the Metis veterans.”
The Metis National Council’s (MNC) minister responsible for veterans, David Chartrand, said the Metis soldiers left as brothers and sisters with their comrades in arms. But it wasn’t that way when they returned to Canada.
“When they came home, they did not realize they’d have another battle, that discrimination would set its course into action, and they were again going to be left to fend for themselves,” he said.
“Many of these veterans told me with tears in their eyes that when they went to ask for simple things like even eyeglasses, they were shunned away.”
He said many were simply told to return to their traplines.
Most of the money will go to a legacy fund to support initiatives like education or monuments. The MNC has only succeeded in tracking down about a dozen Metis veterans who served in the Second World War. The families of those who’ve passed away in the past three years will also get cheques sent to their estates.
Norman Goodon’s brother, Francis, is one of the recently departed. He died just eight months ago. Norman was the younger brother, and was still on his way to the fight when the war ended. But Francis was a prisoner of war who’d fought at Juno Beach.
Norman doesn’t speak much these days. All he’ll say is that he’s looking forward to using his cheque to buy a state-of-the art scooter. But his son John expressed what the moment meant to the family.
“It’s too bad that he’s not here to get this ...” John said of his uncle Francis. “He had a hard time. I do believe that. When he first came back. He had alcohol problems.”
First Nations veterans, who were deprived of their benefits by Indian agents when they returned to their reserves, have already received similar compensation.
But Metis veterans were never recorded as such when they signed up to fight.
They were simply “Canadian” or “French.”
That’s made it far more difficult to track them down 75 years later. According to Chartrand, the effort has relied on ads, meeting and word of mouth to find Metis veterans at care homes and even other countries.
He said they even found one 99-year-old veteran in London, England, and handed him his $20,000 cheque.
They also visited a 106-yearold Metis veteran in Ontario this August.
Chartrand has spent about 20 years waiting for this day. He spoke of what he viewed as complete disinterest on the part of the former Conservative government, and said he believed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had kept his promise by delivering on the compensation and apology.
Asked what motivated him to strive for so long, Chartrand said it was the sight of grown men crying.
He spoke of a trip he took with veterans, including Francis Goodon, to the Juno Beach memorial in France around 2004.
“There was not one artifact to the Metis ...” he said. “I see tears coming down. That hurts.”
But the apology is a signal, 75 years late, that those men haven’t been forgotten.
He thinks Francis would have been honoured.
“I guarantee there’d been tears coming down his cheeks,” said Chartrand. “He would have been so proud to finally be here to hear that apology himself.”