SIDNEY, B.C. -- When he opened his email that day, Bill Weston never expected to find a message from a stranger on the other side of the world. A man from a small museum in the Netherlands was wondering about a picture he found online featuring a group of Royal Canadian Airforce pilots from the Second World War, including Bill’s dad, Lt. William James Weston. “I was surprised,” Bill says. “I was interested in anybody that knew anything about my dad and his crew and his airplane.” Bill was just a boy when his dad went to war and never came home, and when his mom received the telegram that began with, “It’s my painful duty to confirm…” “She sobbed for day,” Bill says, fighting back tears. “I can still hear it.” Bill’s dad and his crew were killed after their plane was shot down over Holland. That final flight is the last entry in a log book William left behind. It’s one of the few tangible reminders that Bill has of his father. “It’s a legacy from my dad,” Bill says. With that legacy on his mind — and following multiple conversations with the man from the museum — Bill decided to take a trip to the Netherlands with his sons and their spouses. “It was quite a bit bigger than we thought it would be,” says James Weston, one of Bill’s sons. Although James had grownup hearing many stories about the grandfather he was named after, to visit the actual site of the plane crash and discover that locals had made a memorial marking it—and then to have a Dutch TV crew follow them to the museum that was built in the town where that final mission ended—was overwhelming. “As you get more and more into it, you’re kind of, ‘whoa,’” James says. Because although they expected to see displays of Canadian artifacts there, they were surprised to find a whole section of the museum honouring Willam and his crew that featured remnants recovered from the plane crash. “It hits hard,” James says. “Because it brings the reality right up front.” “I was a bit overwhelmed, to be quite frank,” Bill says. Bill was so impressed that, after a lot of consideration, he agreed to donate his father’s log book to the museum on permanent loan. “The Dutch are very grateful for the part that Canada played in the liberation of Holland,” Bill says. After also paying their respects at William’s impeccably clean and manicured grave, Bill and his family couldn’t be more grateful for all the work the Dutch keep doing to ensure he will always be remembered. “It’s pretty moving,” James says, fighting back tears. Because buried in so many war cemeteries there were too many real people who had the courage to make the ultimate sacrifice, never forgetting who they were also fighting for back home.
