Lynn Richardson opens her mailbox and pulls out a postcard.
The small piece of thin cardboard weighing less than four grams represents a salute to a fallen soldier.
Fourteen-thousand Canadian soldiers stormed Juno Beach in 1944. It was a pivotal battle that would help to turn the tide of the Second World War.
Seventy-five years later, postcards from Juno, like the one Richardson received, have been mailed to the last known address of the fallen.
“Tragically Brown was killed in action,” Richardson reads.
The Orillia resident knew her house on Coldwater Road shared a connection with Chaplain Walter Leslie Brown but didn’t know much more about him.
“I knew he died during the war, but I wasn’t aware it was during D-Day,” she said.
Juno was one of five beaches along the coast of France where allied forces landed to begin the liberation of Europe.
Brown was among the more than 900 Canadians killed in the first five days of the Battle of Normandy. He was 33. His legacy now lives on with a postcard campaign.
“It’s a nice gesture,” Richardson says. “People tend to forget the sacrifices that a lot of young people made.”
The postcards were prepared and mailed by the Juno Beach Centre. “We wanted to do something that ties the present back to the past and make sure Canadians understood the sacrifices that were made, and the breadth of service Canadians carried out,” explains Lisa Murray, with the Juno Beach Centre Association.
Each card provides a brief description of the soldier who once lived in the home.
Lynn Richardson and her husband purchased their home from Walter Brown’s brother in the 1970’s. “We found a few of his possessions in the basement. There were some military buttons.”
Walter Brown studied theology at what was then called Huron College in London, and a short time later became an ordained minister in Windsor.
With the war in Europe raging, he enlisted in 1941 and as the preparations for D-Day grew more intense, Padre Brown, as his men would call him, volunteered to take part in the D-Day landing.
“I think he had a real devotion to the servicemen he was looking after, and ministering to,” says historian Chris McCreery.
Brown was granted permission, even though as a Padre, he knew he would be going into battle armed with only his suitcase containing his communion kit.
His body was buried alongside other Canadian soldiers in Normandy, France.
