In Our Father’s Footsteps – Commemorate Canada’s liberation of the Netherlands 75 years ago

From Guelph to Kitchener, Burlington, Woodstock, London, Mississauga, Brampton, Bradford, Barrie, Orillia, Collingwood, Newmarket, Cornwall, North Bay… the news is spreading across Ontario (and Canada) about In Our Fathers’ Footsteps, a one-time, first-of-its-kind remembrance event inspired by a WWII memoir written by a Canadian veteran and given to his daughter on his 80th birthday. News of the event has received a standing ovation in Ontario’s provincial legislature.

“What began as In My Father’s Footsteps has captured the hearts and souls of veterans’ descendants across Canada and become In Our Fathers’ Footsteps,” says Karen Hunter, the event’s organizer.

To commemorate Canada’s liberation of the Netherlands 75 years ago, veterans’ descendants will carry the Canadian Remembrance Torch from Toronto to the Netherlands, where they’ll walk, in “platoons” 60 km in the footsteps of the Canadian troops, eat from mess kits and experience the geography and history around them. They’ll honour Canadian veterans at cemeteries and monuments, carry out veterans’ wishes, and party with the Dutch at liberation festivals. They’ll march as a large contingent into Het Loo Palace in Apeldoorn where they’ll meet Princess Margriet.

“In Our Fathers’ Footsteps is a new way of thinking about—and experiencing—remembrance,” Hunter says. “It’s the future of remembrance.”

The sign up deadline is Dec. 31 for this unique, one-time event in May 2020.

More information can be found here.

This Media Release