Remembrance Day 2012

Nov 08, 2012

Denbigh Remembrance Service

Remnants of 1939 plane crash in North Frontenac

A Poppy for Kent

Remembrance Day Poems

Denbigh Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day ceremonies were held a week early in Denbigh, in order not to conflict with those in Flinton, which will take place on Remembrance Day.

But one week early did not mean one week warmer, as the familiar Remembrance Day chill was in the air at the Cenotaph beside the United Church in Denbigh on Sunday, complete with a raw wind and the odd snow flake.

Spectators and participants alike were pulled in closer to the Cenotaph, as much to huddle together against the cold as anything else.

Reverend Bruce Kellar presided over the ceremony, which featured representation from three adjacent townships, First Nations, and others.

The ceremony was followed by a lunch sponsored by the Legion.

Remnants of 1939 plane crash in North FrontenacBy Jeff Green

Several weeks ago,  North Frontenac Fire Chief Steve Riddell (at right) led a group of interested people to the site of a 1939 plane crash on the shores of Cranberry Lake.

Remembrance Day ceremonies at cenotaphs throughout the region tend to focus on the sacrifices of local veterans in far-flung wars in Europe and Asia.

A couple of weeks ago a small group went to see the site of a tragic accident that took place back home in Frontenac County. A plane crash took the lives of two young airmen, George Olstead from Manitoba and James Corbett from Nova Scotia, on October 14, 1939.  Both men had joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in February of that year, and had completed their intermediate flying training at Camp Borden. At the time of the crash they were taking advanced training in Trenton. 

The plane was found the next afternoon on a hillside near the shores of Cranberry Lake (near Crotch Lake) in what is now North Frontenac.

A report in the Whig Standard from October 16, 1929 said that four local residents, Mr. and Mrs. William Sargeant, Fred Trombley and his 17-year-old daughter Mary, discovered the wreckage on Sunday afternoon, October 15. They heard a radio report that morning about a missing plane in the area, and spent the day conducting an organized search.

They saw the gleam of a plane wing at around 3:15 and took another half hour to travel another mile through the bush to the wreckage. The plane had burrowed about 5 feet into a crater full of sand in what was known as Craig’s Meadows.

Local residents, including Bill Riddell of Mississippi, who was hunting in the vicinity on the Saturday, told reporters that he heard the plane “sputtering as though it was in trouble,” but he could not see it because the day was snowy and windy. Blake Buell, the proprietor of a lumber camp on Crotch Lake, said he saw the plane, but thought it was practising special manoeuvres.

It was these local reports that prompted William Sargeant to organize a search party when the radio report came in Sunday morning.

The National Defence Department put out a release on October 16, confirming the death of the two airmen. Both of them had joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in February of that year, and had completed their intermediate flying training at Camp Borden. At the time of the crash they were taking advanced training in Trenton.

They left Trenton at 9:50 on Saturday, the 14th, and were to fly to Carleton Place, then to Elgin and back to Trenton. The place was sighted at 10:50 flying over Kingston, but it must gotten lost on the way to Carleton Place or between Carleton Place and Elgin.

Olstead was flying the plane and Corbett was the passenger.

Locals have visited the site many times in the years following the crash, and a number of artefacts have been gathered as souvenirs.

North Frontenac Fire Chief Steve Riddell, who lives at Snow Road, knows the site well and some people from the area asked him to take them there a few weeks ago to see what was still there.

He said that he hadn’t been there for several years, so he decided to lead the people to the plane, which is relatively easy to access now because a new road that passes very near to the site was built by Frontenac Ventures Corporation when they were conducting uranium exploration in the region a few years ago.

There is still a fair bit left of the chassis and the engine, Riddell said.

The plane is a Fairey Battle, a model that saw active service in 1939/1940. They were built in Great Britain, starting in 1937, as an all-metal upgrade from pervious fabric-covered planes and they used a 1030 horsepower Rolls Royce engine. In all, 2,419 Battles were built. By the time the war started in 1939, the Fairey Battle had been outmoded by the rapidly development of more powerful fighter aircraft, and they were used extensively as training aircraft in Australia, Belgium, Ireland, South Africa, Greenland, Canada, and Turkey.

A Poppy for KentBy Rick Revelle

Photo: Kent Killingbeck

Each Remembrance Day my heart goes out to a gentle soul who was a family friend. He was born in a small Ontario town called Plevna on March 7, 1933 and grew up in an even smaller hamlet called Snow Road. At the age of 20 he suffered more than some of us have suffered in a lifetime. For the next 53 years he worked with what he had and never asked for sympathy. He proved to everyone around him that you take what life has given you and move on. He was a success at what he did the remainder of his life.

Life was hard in those days. Whatever job there was, you earned that dollar you had in your pocket with hard work. Kent’s father supported a wife and 12 children by working for the Ministry of Natural Resources in a lonely job as a fire warden in a lookout tower near Plevna, Ontario.

This is my Remembrance of Kent Killingbeck, a veteran of the Korean War and a man whom I never once heard complain about the card he ended up drawing from the Deck of Life.

To my continued embarrassment, I never ever said thanks to him for the sacrifice that he gave this country.

In 1951 as an 18-year-old he joined the 1st Battalion Royal Canadian Regiment and in December of that year was shipped to Korea. On May 2nd 1953, a short eight weeks after his 20th birthday, while defending Hill 187 in Korea, a grenade thrown by a Chinese soldier ripped into his body and as he lay bleeding another Chinese soldier strafed his legs with machine gunfire as he ran by him.

In his own words he looked down to see if he still had all his parts because if they had been shot off he would have ended his own life right there. Ecstatic that this was not the case his main goal was to survive. He was one of only seven or eight Canadians that day to live through the attack. As he lay wounded and bleeding, unable to move, a fellow Canadian who came with reinforcements laid his body across him and said, "Soldier you have suffered enough today; I'm here to protect you from any more harm."

From that lonely hilltop in Korea he went to the MASH Hospital in Korea where they wanted to amputate the one leg that was in better shape than the other. The American doctors also told him he would never walk again. After that ordeal, with his leg still intact he was sent to the British Commonwealth Hospital in South Korea where they saved both legs. He was then transferred to Kure, Japan and then by train to Tokyo for another long stay before they shipped him to Midway Island, then to Travis, California and Tacoma, Washington. At every stop he was operated on by doctors. He was in Rockcliffe Hospital in Ottawa for six months and the nerve damage in his leg was so bad that he was sent to Sunnybrooke Hospital in Toronto, where he spent a year in a plaster cast up to his waist and was worked on by the best specialists there were at the time.

Told he would never walk again, he proved them all wrong when after two years in hospitals around the world he walked out of the last one to begin his life. Limping badly on the "good leg" and with a leg brace on the other, he was set to take on the world. For his efforts in the military he was awarded the United Service Medal, the Korea Medal and the Korean Volunteer Medal, and his Paratrooper Wings. Besides having two damaged legs, for the balance of his life Kent would also have shrapnel work its way to the surface of his skin where he would pull it out, a grim reminder of how close death brushed him that day as a frightened 20-year-old on a hill half a world away.

I first met him as a five-year-old kid in 1957 when he came with his family to live in an old farmhouse that my family was renting west of Wilton. He and his wife Pearl brought with them a son named Rick and in the next two years Sharon and Pam were born there.

He wasn't a big man, but I remember him as larger than life. He liked to hunt and fish and hated with a passion the people who poached and hunted out of season in the sparsely populated area in Mississippi, where he later made his lifelong home.

He retired from the Ministry of Transportation, where he had worked on road construction his whole life. His retirement vehicle of choice was a big old motor home with a pair of Texas long-horned cattle horns on the front hood, in which he and his bride Pearl drove all over the country visiting friends and relatives.

One weekend he parked this huge monstrosity in our driveway and barbecued. He tipped back a few and then outright amazed me. This 65-year-old man who walked with a bad limp and a brace got up at 5:30 am with me and left for the golf course. He marched stride for stride 18 holes with me and my son, shooting 88. That day when we were done, I choked back tears, marveling at how he kept up with us dragging his leg. Kent though, had a smile that told me he loved every minute of it.

That is why to this day I try not to complain about my aches and pains. I do not have the right to complain. Kent had the right, but I never ever heard him once "whine" about his problem!

Kent and Pearl were together for 50 years until he passed away on May 26, 2006.

I always regretted never shaking his hand and saying thanks. However on this

Remembrance Day 2012 I would like to thank Pearl, Rick, Sharon and Pam for the sacrifices her husband and their dad made for this country, the best nation in the world, Canada.

So on the 11th, please thank a veteran and shake his or her hand. Do not leave it too late, like I did.

With thanks for the files from Amber Rowland and the oral information from

Pearl and Rick Killingbeck and Kent, and of course Opal and Clark. Thanks Kent.

Remembrance Day PoemsDear Grandpa

By Colleen Steele

Dear Grandpa what would it be like if you had survived?Our lives would have been so different if you had not diedMy dad was a wee lad of only fourWhen you were recruited and shipped off to warWould you have taken me in your plane which you loved to fly?Would we have found different constellations in the clear night sky?Would you have kissed away my pain when I got a boo boo?And stayed by my side when I got the mumps, measles or flu?Would you have told me about the Good Old days while I sat on your knee?Would we have laughed and sang while decorating the Christmas tree?Would you have taken me fishing up to "Davy's Hole"?While I tried to catch the Prize fish with my Bamboo Pole?Would you have been there when I hit a home run at the baseball game?Would your name be written in the "Hockey Hall of Fame"?Instead of etched in the granite stone or cementWith the rest of the soldiers on that Special monumentAnd now as I cuddle my Grandchild on my kneeI thank you for your part in our libertyBut Grandpa I still wonder if you had survivedWhat our lives would have been like if you had not died?

Remembrance Day Poemwritten by Cassandra Marrisett when she was 11

I am afraid to open my eyes For men with rifles might be there to my surprise

I listen to what is going on You being here with me keeps me strong I wish I could hold on to all my faith To guide me through life, to hold me in place I am scared to know what I have to go through I am a soldier from World War Two I close my eyes and dream of my new home Where other soldiers are, where I’m not alone I feel Your hand pulling me closer to heaven I didn’t get to see the world, I’m only 11. I couldn’t stand to breathe another hour The smell of my blood that smells so sour I’m dying from getting shot I’m happy now I’m with God