Canada's largest military cemetery is running out of money 

As It Happens7:59Canada's largest military cemetery is running out of money

Bob Peck and Peter MacArthur's fathers never fought together during the Second World War. But today, their remains lay in rest just a few rows apart at the National Field of Honour in Pointe-Claire, Que.

Canada's largest military cemetery on Montreal's West Island is home to more than 22,000 graves of war veterans, both Canadians and their allies, and their spouses, all laid out in neat rows with identical, unassuming, ground-level headstones.

Peck and MacArthur, both former Canadian diplomats, were there last week for an annual ceremony honouring Canada's war dead.

"The beauty of the place is that it's equal in death," MacArthur, former ambassador to Indonesia and the Philippines, told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.

"Whether you were a general or a private, rich or poor, you are buried in equality in the ground there, with the common experience of having participated as the greatest generation, in fighting some of the worst evils that we've ever seen — fighting for democratic values and for freedoms."

But the cemetery's future is in financial jeopardy. So Peck and MacArthur have joined forces in a bid to secure stable federal funding for their fathers' final resting place. 

"We're not doing it only for our own fathers, obviously, but we're speaking up and acting on behalf of the families of all veterans of several wars," Peck, former ambassador to Algeria and Greece, told Köksal. 

Their efforts — as well as their intimate moment sharing whisky over their fathers' graves last week — were the subject of a recent story in the Montreal Gazette.

The Field of Honour is owned and operated by the Last Post Fund, a national non-profit that works with Veteran Affairs Canada to ensure that all veterans, regardless of economic status, receive dignified funerals, burials and gravestones when they die.

The charity, founded in 1909, purchased the cemetery land in Pointe-Claire in the 1930s, and has maintained it ever since, says spokesperson and former president Derek Sullivan. 

The charity largely works in co-operation with private cemeteries across Canada to bury veterans whose families are struggling financially, or who died as a direct result of their service. 

But at the Field of Honour, veterans who don't meet that criteria can purchase their plots, with the money going into a fund used to maintain the site.

Charity facing mounting deficits

But over the decades, Sullivan says running the cemetery has become unsustainable. Maintenance costs have gone up, and fewer families are purchasing plots. 

The cemetery fund currently has $1 million in it, he says, and the charity is running annual deficits of $200,000.

"At the current rate we have of deficit, we will run out of money within five years," he said. 

In 2020, the Last Post Fund asked Veterans Affairs Canada to take over ownership and maintenance of the Field of Honour. 

This, Sullivan says, would clear the deficit, and allow the charity to concentrate on its other work — like making sure veterans' families know about their burial services, and finding and identifying unmarked soldiers' graves, including those of Indigenous veterans. 

Veterans Affairs Canada says it has been working with Public Service and Procurement Canada to assess the charity's proposal, and is currently reviewing its options. 

"We look forward to working with the Last Post Fund on a path forward," Veteran Affairs Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor told CBC in an emailed statement. 

Veteran Affairs already owns and oversees two military cemeteries in Halifax and Esquimalt, B.C.

"So the question arises: why would the largest in the country be any different?" MacArthur said. "There's a need for consistency, in our view."

Honouring their fathers' sacrifices 

Sullivan says he expects Veteran Affairs Canada to make a recommendation to Taylor sometime next month, at which point cabinet would decide how to move forward.

But Peck and MacArthur say they want the feds to move faster.

They've submitted a petition to Parliament, with more than 500 signatures and counting, calling on Veteran Affairs to take over the cemetery, and ensure that it is "maintained to high standards comparable to those abroad as overseen by The Commonwealth War Graves Commission."

"We think that the time is now as ... we approach a momentous 80th anniversary of D-Day, for the government to step up and make a public commitment that well into the future, this cemetery will be maintained and funded to the highest standards," MacArthur said. 

D-Day, also known as the invasion of Normandy, saw 24,000 American, British, and Canadian troops storm the beaches of German-occupied France on June 6, 1944, turning the tide of the Second World War. 

For Peck, D-Day is deeply personal. His father, Lt.-Cdr. Robert A. Peck, was there.

"As a young boy, together with my brother, I have vivid memories of walking Juno Beach with my father, who had very vivid memories of that day," he said. "We returned again when I was a teenager, where I had a greater understanding of the historic impact of D-Day."

His father kept many of his darkest memories to himself, he said. 

"But I think the message that he always imparted to us was the bravery of his comrades, the sense of common purpose and the importance of memory," he said.

"He really wanted us to always remember those who never came back. We were fortunate, of course, that our father returned, but so many never did."

MacArthur's father, Pte. Dan MacArthur, was an infantryman in the 48 Highlanders, 1st Canadian Division, who served in Italy. He was wounded at the age of 20, and transferred to the Netherlands in early 1945, where he was a front-line medic.

He contracted tuberculosis during the war, and spent two years in hospital after it ended.

"There was a lot of damage to these young fellows. They lost their friends, many colleagues. He told me of nightmares he was still having in his 80s before he passed away," MacArthur said.

Still, he says his father and his comrades always believed that, in the end, defeating the Nazis was "worth the cost."

That, the diplomats say, is why the Field of Honour should get the highest possible standard of care. 

"It would honour the sacrifice, the memory, of all of those who served Canada and defended our freedom," Peck said.