Museum in France closer to erecting monument to Canadian soldiers killed on D-Day

The Juno Beach Centre at Courseulles-Sur-Mer, France, in an undated photo. The museum commemorates the Canadian contributions to the Second World War and overlooks the grounds of the historic battle that took place on D-Day: June 6, 1944. (Credit: Juno Beach Centre)

The Edmonton man who heads up Canada’s museum at the French site of a key battle that led to Allied victory in the Second World War says the campaign to erect a memorial there is close to starting construction.

Chris LaBossiere, the president of the Juno Beach Centre in the Normandy region of France, said that work to develop an outdoor interpretive centre on land next to the museum that sits at the point where 160,000 Allied troops landed on June 6, 1944, a date known widely as D-Day, could begin as early as February.

The museum commemorates the Canadian contributions to the Second World War and overlooks the grounds of the battle.

A five-metre tall monument recognizing the 381 Canadian soldiers who were killed on the first day of the invasion is envisioned as the centrepiece of the outdoor space, which is on land which the Juno Beach Centre acquired four years ago in the wake of a legal battle with developers who had planned to build condos on the site.

The Canadian government helped buy the land in 2022 with the French town of Courseulles-Sur-Mer, giving it to the Juno Beach Centre “to do something with it,” LaBossiere said.

“In response to that, and to kind of finish the story for the Canadians who fought for that, we decided to build an outdoor interpretive addition to the museum,” LaBossiere told CTV News Edmonton.

The Canadians who died that day were among the 4,414 Allied troops killed on D-Day.

Among them were Marty Jones’s brothers in arms. The anti-aircraft gunner had just turned 19 when his ship, the HMCS Prince Henry, landed at Juno Beach that day, the beginning of the bloody 77-day Battle of Normandy and the start of the Allied liberation of France.

The Edmonton veteran, who turned 101 last week, vividly remembers the day.

“I never had a chance to say goodbye,” Jones said. “You just wave to them because you’re too busy saving your own neck and those that you were responsible for.”

The Saskatchewan farm boy had enlisted in the Canadian Navy two years earlier and left home to train at Esquimalt, B.C. Jones and the HMCS Prince Henry were deployed to Normandy after the craft had been converted from an armed merchant cruiser to an infantry landing ship.

“It was a rude awakening for a young guy who had always been a pacifist and a good guy,” Jones said, recalling the conflict with the German forces. “I love my brothers, and it hurt, but you had to turn a blind eye to all that and get on with it, or else you were a victim.”

In the end, the toll was enormous: 73,000 Allied forces were killed and 153,000 wounded. Around 20,000 French civilians were also killed, many as a result of Allied bombings of French villages and cities.

Historians estimate about 22,000 German soldiers are among those buried around Normandy, and between 4,000 and 9,000 of them were killed, wounded or went missing during the D-Day invasion alone.

The region’s cemeteries are also the final resting place for more than 5,000 Canadians\.

He said the centre hopes to have the $12.5-million project built in time for the 85th anniversary of D-Day in 2028. It’s about halfway finished fundraising for it after the legal costs in fighting the French condo developer drained the centre’s coffers.

Among the donors to the project is Alberta-based Enbridge, which has given $150,000 to sponsor the monument that will bear the names of the Canadians who died at Juno Beach that infamous 1944 day.

“We have offshore wind (farm operations) in Normandy, so we saw this as a meaningful way to honour the Canadians who gave their lives on D-Day in 1944 and to help preserve that legacy for future generations,” said Gina Sutherland, an Enbridge media relations advisor.

The Juno Beach Centre’s capital campaign for the monument and museum expansion is open online. LaBossiere says the campaign is “a launching pad” for its domestic and educational programs.

“We have programs for teachers and students, our guide program,” he said. “There’s always a constant need for funding.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Amanda Anderson and The Canadian Press