Every year, a number of Canadians, most of them ex-service personnel, are awarded a Veterans Affairs Minister's Commendation for their efforts to honour or help or commemorate our veterans.

     This year, one of a handful of civilian recipients is my friend Bill.

     Some few of you who have followed my increasingly infrequent posts here will remember him as the inspiration for several essays on Canadian military history.

     In one, he appeared in a photo taken in the local Royal Canadian Legion branch, where he is the archivist. He is talking with Dutch tourists visiting the home towns of the men from the Essex Scottish Regiment who liberated them from the Nazis.    

     But activities like that, significant as they might be, aren't the main reason he got the commendation.

     He got it for the enormous amount of research and time he continues to put in to tracking down the stories of those who served in the world wars and other conflicts and who were connected to this fishing village on Lake Erie.

     According to the Cenotaph in front of the library, there were 39 who never made it home and who lie in places as far-flung as the Sahara, Italy, France and Flanders and the restless seas. Many of them have no known graves.

     But Bill found several others who died on or because of active service and whose names are not, for whatever reason, chiseled into the granite.

     Often using his own money -- although he later got a grant from Veterans Affairs -- he searched out archives and records, ordering reams of material from the federal government. He used the official documents to flesh out anecdotal information and family records.

     The results were put into story form, nearly 50 of them all told (something with which I was happy to help), and the thumbnail biographies of those who died ran week after week for months in the local paper. Many of the details were made public for the first time, and response from readers, especially families, was gratifying, to say the least.

     Bill may not ever have worn a military uniform, but for decades, he did proudly don the gear of a volunteer firefighter to serve his community, and he is a firm believer in the things that continue to make the Canadian military -- and Canada -- what it was and is. In short, he's everything a recipient of a Minister's Commendation should be.

     Salute.

 Bill with Dutch visitors. Over his shoulder are the uniforms
of a soldier from the First Canadian  Infantry Division
and an airman from the Royal Canadian Air Force.
The Legion's walls, both upstairs and down,
are replete with similar donated memorabilia.

 Sampson Dodge continues to be an enigma.

There are others whose names should be included.

 And more from the Second World War.