Foundation striving to remember each fallen hero from Sask.
Daniel Allister McCann was two weeks shy of his 22nd birthday and was an observer on a Lockeed Hudson aircraft when it disappeared during an anti-shipping raid off the Dutch coast in the spring of 1942.
McCann, who grew up in Saskatoon and graduated from Nutana Collegiate before moving to Ottawa and enlisting, was one of more than 10,000 Saskatchewan-born soldiers, sailors and aircrew who have been killed in action since the beginning of the First World War.
He is also one of more than 20 people from the province to have been memorialized by the Saskatchewan branch of the Canadian Fallen Heroes Foundation, which is seeking biographical details on others from the public.
“I think it shows the tragedy of war,” George Seitz, the 10-year-old Alberta-based charity’s representative in the province, said of the effort to build a 19-by-23-inch framed memorial for each fallen warrior from the province.
Ten of those memorials are currently on display at Royal Canadian Legion Branch 362 on Louise Street. About a dozen more are in Legion halls and schools around the province, Seitz said.
The ultimate aim is to collect enough photos and information to create a similar oak-framed memorial for each of the province’s war dead, which can then be delivered to their hometowns, he said.
“I like what I do,” the Canadian Forces veteran said of his work with the foundation, which began in Saskatoon just over a year ago and is expected to continue for many more.
On Tuesday, the Fallen Heroes Foundation staged an event and fundraiser at the Nutana Legion to give the project some exposure and help encourage people to share their research. Although McCann was “lost without a trace” 75 years ago this month, his memory — like those of so many others — will hopefully live on in the work of the foundation, Seitz said.