Bronze plaque not ready because of error in number
Chris Wattie
National Post
Tuesday, August 20, 2002
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| Reuters Canadian war veteran Cliff Chadderton of Ottawa gives a high-five to a French boy during a parade through Dieppe, France, yesterday. |
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| An unidentified Royal Canadian Navy veteran wipes his eyes during commemorations in Dieppe, France, yesterday. |
DIEPPE, France - The Canadian government officially recognized the location of the Dieppe raid as a national historic site yesterday, 60 years after the Second World War battle, which is considered the greatest military disaster in Canadian history.
However, one of the two massive bronze plaques to be erected in this scenic Channel port was not present for the unveiling by Raymond Chrétien, the Canadian ambassador to France, because officials with the Canadian Heritage Ministry put the incorrect casualty figures on the 125-kilogram plaque.
Christina Cameron, director-general of National Historic Sites, said the mistake in the figures listed on the first plaque (the second was a map of the beaches attacked by the Canadian regiments and British commandos) was caught at the last minute.
"It hadn't been cast yet, but they were about to start when they decided to make one last check with the Dieppe veterans association," she said. "They found a discrepancy."
The figure in dispute apparently underestimated the number of troops who returned "unscathed" from the raid.
Ms. Cameron said the corrected plaque will be ready within a month.
Memorials to the more than 900 Canadians killed in the 1942 raid are everywhere in Dieppe, from the large Allied memorial near the seawall overlooking the stony beach where the troops landed to a street named after Dollard Ménard, commander of the Fusiliers de Mont Royal Regiment during the raid.
But none of the dozens of markers, plaques and memorials has been provided by the Canadian government. Most were erected by private citizens, French governments or the governments of other Allied nations participating in the battle.
About 5,000 of the more than 6,000 soldiers who came ashore at Dieppe were Canadian.
Roy Bailey, the Canadian Alliance veterans affairs critic, said it was a shocking oversight that the federal government has never recognized the historic significance of the raid. More than 900 Canadian soldiers, sailors and airmen were killed in the raid and nearly 2,000 were taken prisoner.
"There was so much negativism after Dieppe, so maybe that's why," he said during a break in ceremonies to mark the anniversary of the raid. "But that does not excuse the government of Canada for being so late in recognizing what the other Allied countries recognized decades ago."
He said the error in the casualty figures on the plaque was inexcusable. "I'm surprised that they wouldn't have had that information five years after the war, let alone 60 years after."
Ms. Cameron said the federal government did not begin recognizing historic sites outside Canada until about five years ago, when the First World War battlefields at Vimy Ridge and Beaumont Hamel were declared national historic sites.The scene of the 1944 D-Day landings in Normandy were given national historic status in 1999.
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