Some 400 unsuspecting property owners and tenants across Canada are about to get a dose of military history courtesy of mystery postcards soon to land in their mailboxes.

The project — Postcards from Juno — being spearheaded by the Juno Beach Centre, Canada’s Second World War museum on Juno Beach, is using postcards to notify people living at select addresses about Second World War veterans who lived at their current location in the 1940s, before heading over to serve in Nazi-occupied France, where they were killed in battle.

The veterans were chosen from among the Canadians who died during the first five days of the Normandy landings — from June 6 to June 10, 1944 — a pivotal step in the march toward Europe’s liberation from Nazi Germany.

Staff at the centre cultivated the first tranche of addresses from the attestation papers of soldiers — the military records of more than 900 Canadians — who died during those first days of the Battle of Normandy.

The project is part of efforts to mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day (June 6, 1944) when 14,000 Canadian soldiers, along with over 140,000 British and American allies, stormed a stretch of beach (code named “Juno”) on France’s northern coast, creating the largest seaborne invasion in history.

The personalized postcards include the name, rank, age, and the date of death of the soldier linked to each address.

The idea of using the last pieces of personal information linked to hundreds of fallen Canadian soldiers to create postcards commemorating their sacrifice was conceived by Mike Bechthold, executive director, Juno Beach Centre Association, which operates the war museum in Normandy.

“It’s a way to look at the men who never came home,” he said. “In a lot of ways, these are the postcards they would have sent, had they survived the battle.”

The cards will include a collage of images from D-Day and the Battle of Normandy and inform recipients they’re living at the last known address of the soldier before he volunteered to serve.

Details on how current residents can comment on the project will be attached, something Bechthold hopes will harvest interesting tidbits not yet known about the addresses and the soldiers themselves.

He’s aware that some of the cards could end up with recipients who may toss them into the bin before understanding their intended purpose — but, it’s worth the risk.

“It’s about raising awareness,” he said. “I would like to see Juno Beach on a Canadian $20 bill. I would like there to be a Juno beach day, very much like how we have Vimy Ridge Day.”

“As we lose our veterans, we’re losing our personal connection with the story,” he said.

This batch is the first of what he envisions being hundreds more cards to come.

“We have every intention of doing that,” he said of expanding the project. “Right now, it’s about keeping it as a manageable project, because 900 addresses is a lot to go through.”

Jason Miller

Pte. George Westlake, Cliff St., Toronto

Dave Byron will soon have another keepsake to tuck away with his own father’s Second World War service medals — a postcard honouring one of three brothers, who once lived at his house and were killed during the Normandy landings.

It didn’t take Byron, 65, long to utter the name of the three military men who lived in the Cliff St. home he now inhabits.

“The Westlake brothers,” he said with some certainty of the surname that rings bells in military circles. “I already knew it.”

The Westlakes’ legacy is imprinted all over his neighbourhood.

Westlake Memorial Park within a stones throw of his front stoop bears their name and a laneway near the park was rebranded — Heroes Lane — in their honour.

“How the hell did a family with three boys live in this thing, it’s not big enough and I live alone,” Byron quipped.

Byron’s home is among the 82 Toronto addresses that are part of the Postcards from Juno project.

George Westlake, 23, of the North Nova Scotia Highlanders, was the first of the brothers to die on June 7. Four days later Albert, 25, and Thomas, 29, members of the Queen’s Own Rifles, were among 100 Canadians who died trying to take the tiny village of Mesnil Patry.

Juno Centre officials said this batch of cards will honour George — his brothers died just after the cut-off date for this leg of the project.

Byron, who has resided at that address since 1981, recalls celebratory gatherings of groups near the house in previous years.

“I had a tour from France show up one day,” he said. “My neighbour called and said, there is a whole bunch of people in your front yard.”

The group in question — Westlake Brothers Souvenir Association — was brought there by Gary Westlake.

Westlake, 77, a nephew of the fallen veterans, has fought doggedly to have their sacrifice commemorated. Westlake lauded the Juno Centre for its efforts.

“They’re the only three Allied soldiers — who are brothers — in the world, to be buried in the same cemetery,” he said. “Any added source of remembrance, I applaud.”

Westlake initially had some misgivings about the card being sent to Cliff St., preferring instead for it to end up with immediate family, the nearby Royal Legion Branch 31 or Westlake Brothers Souvenir Association.

Hearing of Westlake’s feelings, Byron said the card will certainly not land in the garbage and he’s open to handing it over to a group of Westlake’s choosing.

“I think it’s a good idea that they’re doing this and I would like to get one,” Byron said of receiving the cards. “I will do more research, because my father and two uncles served in World War II.”

Gary Westlake met Byron for the first time on April 1. They exchanged stories about their links to the war.

“Since he’s got a connection to the military, that would be a nice person to send it to,” Westlake said. “I will share it with him, because I would love for him to know about who my uncles are.”

Jason Miller

Pte. John E. Stewart, W. 10th Ave., Vancouver

Terry Sanderson’s late father, Bert, served in the Second World War as an artist who helped craft military decoys and worked on set design for theatrical productions that toured army camps.

Bert was never sent out on the front lines, but between 1944 and 1945 he spent time in the U.K., France and Germany, where he created fake airfield strips and airplane decoys to throw off the Germans flying overhead.

Sanderson was surprised to learn that his Vancouver home sits on land that was the last known address of Pte. John E. Stewart, who died on D-Day, June 6, 1944, at the age of 48. He is buried in Bretteville-sur-Laize Canadian War Cemetery in Normandy.

“I’ve always hated wars, I feel sad for this guy ... he’s a hero,” said Sanderson, who should get a postcard from the Juno Beach Centre.

“I feel sorry for his family, too. I know what my grandmother and my mom went through when my uncle and dad were overseas.”

Sanderson was about 7 when his dad set out for Europe and the U.K., and remembers him coming home about two years later with a small sketch pad full of European street scenes. A commercial artist by trade, Bert also took photographs during his time overseas, and his photos of postwar Germany sit in boxes at Sanderson’s brother’s house.

Bert would later reproduce at least a dozen of the sketches and photos as much larger watercolour paintings.

Now 82, Sanderson’s memories of his father’s participation in the war are sparse, but one of the watercolours hangs on the wall of his condo in Vancouver’s Fraser Heights neighbourhood.

“When he came back I used to watch him put a paper on the kitchen table and start painting. I always loved watching somebody do something like that.”

Sanderson’s family connection to the war extends to his uncle, Bernard O’Sullivan, who was part of the Royal Canadian Air Force, and flew Spitfire planes in the Battle of Normandy in France. O’Sullivan, survived the war and worked as a TV and stage actor after returning home.

Tessa Vikander

Flight Sgt. Morris Campbell Murray, Kingswood Rd., Toronto

A six-month stay in France, almost 26 years ago, led Tony Price and his wife, Leslie, on a military odyssey across Europe.

Unbeknown to the Prices, the Toronto home they were leaving behind contained a piece of military history that would take them more than 30 years to uncover: their home was the last address of Second World War soldier, Flight Sgt. Morris Campbell Murray.

“I’m very proud of this house and its connection to that time,” Tony Price said, while standing at the entrance of the picturesque two-story house.

Price has dug into the history of his Beaches-area home, but the search came up mostly blank except for the fact it was built in 1909.

A surprise call from the Star, informing the 72-year-old and his wife of the Juno Centre’s postcard initiative, aimed at honouring Murray and hundreds of others killed during the first five days of the Normandy landings — unlocked a treasure trove of historical information.

Price was surprised by some of the connections his own family shared with Murray, who was 29 when he was killed on D-Day.

Murray attended one of the local schools, Malvern Collegiate, where Price’s children went. And Price now knows that Murray died conducting air attacks of German-held Mont Fleury, on June 6, 1944.

“Oh my God, this is so very interesting,” said Price, whose Welsh-born father fought with the British at Ypres, Belgium.

Leslie Price, 71, noted the couple have made several trips to northern France, to sites linked to the First World War. Last fall they visited Vimy Ridge, for Remembrance Day.

One trip that stands out was a tour of Dieppe, France, where in August 1942, the Allies conducted a raid on that was catastrophic, with more than half of the raiding soldiers killed, most of whom were Canadians.

“There are these German bunkers up on the hill, up from a steep cobblestone beach,” she recalled of the site. “The Canadian troops were sent in and they were slaughtered.”

She said the postcard will serve as symbol of their respect for and appreciation of Canadians’ contributions to the Second World War.

“The number of these veterans left is dwindling,” she said. “This is a good way to keep their memory alive.”

Jason Miller

Trooper Alfred White, 81st St., Edmonton

Born in Denmark in 1943 during the German occupation, Kurt Sorensen doesn’t have any memories of the Second World War, but he can recall some of its effects, like the rationing of things like cigarettes and coffee.

“I remember they had to have stamps to get that kind of stuff,” he said. “Even in the ’50s.”

In the fall of 1966, Sorenson moved to Canada and worked as a farm hand in Saskatchewan before landing an oilpatch job in northern Alberta. He made enough to buy a small two-bedroom house in Edmonton’s Forest Heights neighbourhood in the early 1990s, just south of the North Saskatchewan River, where he’s lived ever since.

Before that it was the home of Trooper Alfred White, with the Sherbrooke Fusiliers Regiment, who died at 32 on June 7, a day after the Allied landing at Normandy. The son of Victor and Margaret White, he is buried at the Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery near Reviers, France, not far from where he died.

While he was surprised to learn of his connection to the soldier, Sorensen felt an instant respect for White’s sacrifice, and a brotherly bond that transcends time, one he said is shared by those who’ve served.

Having served in the Danish Army for two years as a young man, Sorensen still remembers fragments of his training. In his front yard, he deftly performs a few drill commands, standing at attention and presenting arms with a nearby broom serving as a makeshift rifle.

“It’s something that’s stayed with me all my life,” he added. “We were proud to serve. It was the comradeship.”

When he gets his postcard from the Juno Beach Centre, commemorating White’s service, Sorensen intends to hang it on his wall.

Hamdi Issawi

Pte. Robert Neville Cooper, 1st Avenue N.W., Calgary

For 33 years, Richard Weisbeck, 79, has lived in an apartment on a residential, inner-city street in the Calgary neighbourhood of Sunnyside. Up until recently, he shared it with his wife, Irene, who died three months ago. So he knows about loss.

The 31-unit apartment building that he manages sits on the same land where Pte. Robert Neville Cooper once lived, a soldier with the Canadian Scottish Regiment who died at Juno Beach on D-Day, a month before his 24th birthday. Cooper is buried in the Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery near Caen, France.

The son of Albert Henry and Gertrude Middleton Cooper of Vancouver, Cooper worked at the Yale and Royal hotels before he enlisted in Calgary in 1940. He was one of 87 Canadian Scottish who lost their lives that day, although the Juno Beach Centre notes his regiment captured 200 prisoners and killed “a good number” of the enemy.

Soon a postcard will arrive at Weisbeck’s building, a reminder from the centre in France that June 6 — the day Cooper died — marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day, when Allied forces landed on the beach.

Weisbeck has no connection to Cooper other than the earth under his feet, but the same war touched his life, although his family’s story has a happier ending. His father and three uncles came home when he was around 7, but he wasn’t allowed to ask them about it.

“They (his uncles and his dad) told us that we should never bring it up, because there’s too much that went on,” said Weisbeck, who knows little about his father’s military experience.

When he thinks about war in today’s age, he thinks of the “depressing” attacks on religious groups and churches around the world, including the Christchurch mosque shooting in New Zealand in March and the wave of bombings that struck hotels and churches in Sri Lanka on Easter.

“There are people in this world that do bad things, and they try to create more problems,” he said. “There should be no discrimination of any kind about what your nationality or religion (is) or where you’re born or anything ... Life’s too short, I know that.”

Amy Tucker

Rifleman Norman Symington, Salisbury Ave., Toronto

Mark Kingwell is a self-described Canadian military brat, who was constantly uprooted from one military base to the next, an upbringing that had him living in locales from P.E.I., to Nova Scotia, to Winnipeg and London, Ontario.

“We moved every few years,” Kingwell, 56, said of his formative years as the son of Royal Canadian Air Force serviceman.

His wife, Molly Montgomery, is an American, whose father Bruce Montgomery was a civil-rights supporter, who opposed the Vietnam War and fought to gain equal representation for Black Americans.

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“He represented Black contractors in Washington who were not receiving fair pay,” she said. “Both my parents were against the Vietnam War, and protested when they could.”

Since tying the knot 11 years ago, the couple has created many memorable moments at their Cabbagetown home, but the history of the quaint Salisbury Ave. house was recently amplified with notice that it was the last known address for Rifleman Norman Symington, who was 24-years-old when he was killed on June 7, 1944.

The duo will soon have a colourful commemorative postcard, courtesy of the Juno Beach Centre, marking Symington’s service and his connection to the home.

“It adds meaning and a sense of history to the home,” said Montgomery, 56, who believes the home was built around 1885.

Montgomery treasures her mother’s tales about the hardships of life during the Second World War, such as food rationing and how butter shortages led to margarine being sold in its pasty, white state along with a package of vegetable dye, which the women of the household would have to mix in to create the sought-after yellow colour, common to people who use the product today.

“It was more of a collective sacrifice,” she said of that era. “Now, it just seems fragmented. We don’t have that connection to a common cause anymore.”

Kingwell said the First and Second World Wars were key to Canada establishing its national identity. The lure of military service, even had him thinking about following in his father’s footsteps.

“I came very close to joining up myself when I was finishing high school,” said Kingwell, who is now a University of Toronto philosophy professor. “I wanted to fly airplanes.”

Jason Miller

Lance-Cpl. Robert William Walker, Sophia St., Vancouver

Paul Jenkinson takes great pride in his home and his father’s 11 years of service as a radar technician on the DEW line after the Second World War. On war memorial days, he hangs a large Canadian flag on the porch of his three-storey character house in Vancouver’s Mt. Pleasant neighbourhood.

Seated on a green velvet antique sofa in his living room, Jenkinson tears up when he recalls his father, William Joseph Jenkinson, realizing the six-year anniversary of his death is only days away. William enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force, but never fought in a war.

Jenkinson and his wife purchased the house about 15 years ago, and he and his father-in-law spent 10 years restoring it from top to bottom. Built around 1910, the wood-frame house was the last known address of Robert William Walker, a Lance Corporal from the Canadian Scottish Regiment, who died in Normandy at 21 on June 9, 1944.

It’s an aspect of the house’s history Jenkinson hadn’t known until the Star knocked at his door.

“It’s touching, to say the least. It actually really wants me to preserve the house.”

Jenkinson and his wife have discussed selling the house in recent years, but he’s worried a future owner would knock it down. He wants to apply for a heritage house designation, despite the fact that doing so could decrease the property value.

“I’m not selling, I don’t care what the city assesses it at,” he said. “I want it designated heritage so that a house like this stays behind.”

Tessa Vikander

Flying Officer John Arthur Cole, 100A St., Edmonton

In November, Dan Allen plans to travel Europe on a guided tour of Second World War sites. Along the way he will stop in Normandy, where his father, a private in the Governor General’s Foot Guard, landed 75 years ago, shortly after D-Day.

Although his father survived the war, even though he was captured and interned for a month as a German prisoner of war, his father’s lieutenant George Edgar Venus wasn’t as fortunate. Venus is buried at Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery in the Netherlands, another stop on Allen’s itinerary, where he plans to pay his respects to the man who served with his father.

If Allen adds a visit to the Courances Communal Cemetery 60 km south of Paris, he would find yet another connection to the Second World War: The grave of John Arthur Cole.

On June 6, 1944, the 23-year-old Flying Officer with the Royal Canadian Air Force 78 Squadron died at Juno Beach. Before that, Cole lived at the Rossdale address in Edmonton that Allen calls home.

“It’s good to know that there was a veteran here who gave his life,” Allen said. “It gives you a better connection to that past.”

In 2003, Allen said the house that once stood there was torn down, making way for the river valley home he built and shares with his wife. The fact that the address hasn’t changed means he’ll be expecting a postcard from the Juno Beach Centre celebrating Cole’s life and service.

It’s a gesture the 69-year-old appreciates. With time marching on, and as the lives and memories of those who lived through and fought in the Second World War fade, he said we’re quickly approaching the end of an era.

“As we get older, those last vets, the ones that survived, every year there’s less and less of them,” Allen explained. “There’s not a lot of time left.”

When Allen receives his postcard, he plans to add it to a book of keepsakes, including letters his father penned home during the war, and share that history with his children and grandchildren to keep those memories alive.

Hamdi Issawi

Rifleman Thomas Joseph Pierce, Delaney Cres., Toronto

Don’t try to convince Nada Conic that Canadian troops were merely good Samaritans whose sole aim it was to liberate a persecuted continent.

“I don’t experience World War Two from the notion of Canadians volunteering to pay the ultimate price to liberate Europe,” she said. “I have a very complicated relationship with the military.”

Standing at the entrance of her Delaney Cres. home in Toronto — the last known address of Rifleman Thomas Joseph Pierce — Conic pauses before explaining that her parents’ homeland of Yugoslavia was rendered forever fractured because of the war.

Though Conic has compassion for the soldiers killed, she’s reluctant to sing praises for the horrors the war unleashed on many ordinary people.

“I do not see them as dying in glory for a righteous cause, no matter how justified the Allies were in defeating the Nazis,” Conic said. “The Third Reich had to be brought to an end. But, the lads who signed up dreaming of glory were pawns and cannon fodder in a cynical and stupid game.”

According to military records Pierce was born Nov. 21, 1921 and was 23 when he was killed while serving as a member of the Queen’s Own Rifles. He’s buried at buried at Beny-Sur-Mer, the Canadian cemetery near Juno Beach.

Conic and her Irish-Canadian wife, Paula Monahan, 60, are now anticipating the arrival of a the commemorative postcard, sent by the Juno Beach Centre, honouring Pierce’s sacrifice, and forever linking him to the Toronto house they now share.

“I hadn’t heard stories like that until I met Nada,” Monahan said, referring to Conic’s family’s experience. “It certainly gives you insight into the other side.”

“She never gets as fierce about anything, as she gets when she talks about the war,” Monahan said. “Where as we think if it as a great victory, her mom was almost bombed.”

Still, Monahan takes pride in living in house once home to a soldier who died for the freedom of his country.

The owner of the property is Linda Roberts, whose father, Joseph Ferdinand Keay, died at 65 in 1988, and served in two major conflicts: the Second World War and Korean War.

“He’s one of those ones who never talked about it,” she said. “So many of them came home devastated from these wars, so they never got over it.”

Word of the postcard has spurred renewed interest in her own family history.

“It’s wonderful to be commemorating these people, because this younger generation aren’t going to be aware of it if we don’t keep on them,” she said. “You don’t want these soldiers lost, because they gave up their lives for us.”

Jason Miller

Pilot Officer Harry Beazley, Liverpool St., Halifax

It will be four years this August since Carla Taunton and her partner moved into the charming two-story home on Liverpool St.

The west-end Halifax home is modest — a front mud room opens into a spacious living room scattered with toys, and behind that is a playroom that used to be Taunton’s office. The kitchen and porch at the back of the house are new additions. A three-tiered bird feeder hangs off the gnarled tree in the front yard. It’s her 1-year-old daughter Ruby’s first home.

Soon Taunton should receive a postcard from the Juno Beach Centre telling her that the house was the last address of Pilot Officer Harry Beazley. He served with No. 15 Squadron of the Royal Air Force until his death on June 8, 1944, and is buried in a communal grave with six other pilots in the Gambais Churchyard in Yvelines, France.

“I love the idea of the multiple histories of an object or a home,” Taunton said after learning about the Juno Centre’s postcard project.

“Thinking about how there has been so many people that have lived here, but not only the histories of the home, but the everyday stories.”

Taunton recently researched her own family tree and discovered that her mother’s brother, Tank Cmdr. Douglas Gordon Purdy, died in Dieppe in 1942, and her great grandfather, Charles Taunton, died during the First World War.

“I was always interested in learning about Canada’s role in the war, and then figured out we lost two significant family members in the process,” said Taunton. “I think it’s incredible to make those connections to service.”

When she thinks about war, Taunton thinks about being a new mother and the impact of war on the family left behind. After her great-grandfather died, Taunton said her family was uprooted, moving from Montreal to Vancouver, where she was raised.

“I wonder, since he didn’t come home, what happened to the family here,” said Taunton about Harry Beazley, who was 26 when he died. According to property records, the home belonged to his parents, Robert and Alice. After Alice died in 1962, Robert lived there 10 more years until the house was sold when he was 96.

Taunton, an art historian at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University, is excited about the visual aspect of the postcard project.

“It’s a way to articulate or bring forward an idea or history that we can’t perceive in our mind sometimes.”

To her, the postcard project will allow disparate communities to share ideas and experiences.

“You can do that through art because you can make people feel bigger than themselves, but also connected,” said Taunton.

Regardless of where they’re sent, Taunton thinks the Juno Beach Centre project is an opportunity for Canadians from diverse backgrounds to realize war histories can hit surprisingly close to home.

“I think the postcard is perfect,” said Taunton. “It’s bringing it back together.”

Julia-Simone Rutgers

Pte. Joseph Rackham, 12th St. N.E., Calgary

Rafael Allocca doesn’t live in the original house that was built on his northeast Calgary property in 1928, but there’s something about it that makes him feel like he and his partner are not alone.

“There’s a presence of someone living here,” said Allocca, 51, who bought the Bridgeland place in 1995, and later demolished the original house and rebuilt it in 2013.

According to the Juno Beach Centre, a Second World War museum in France, Allocca’s property was once the home of Pte. Joseph J. Rackham, an infantryman with the Canadian Scottish Regiment who died on June 7, 1944 at the age of 34 during the invasion of Normandy. It was an important turning point in the war against the Nazis forces occupying Western Europe.

Allocca was going to receive one of the postcards being mailed out from the Juno Beach Centre in France to the home addresses of Canadian soldiers killed in the first wave of the Normandy invasion. Rackham did register for the army with Allocca’s address, but the chance discovery of a Calgary Herald news report of Rackham’s death has a different address on it, so the Juno Beach Centre has updated its database and the card will now go to a house about a kilometre away to mark 75 years since the Allied invasion began on June 6, 1944, known as D-Day.

Because there were no known remains, Rackham’s name was added to a list of 1,800 Commonwealth soldiers at the Bayeaux Memorial near Caen, France.

Although the Second World War was over long before Allocca was born in 1968, he heard stories from his father about the war service of his grandfather, who served in the Italian army and at one point was once a prisoner in England for about a year.

“From what my dad told me, he (his grandfather) served in Britain for a few years and (in) India.”

His father, as the oldest of four children, had to help raise his siblings until their father returned.

Amy Tucker