Remembering what Canadians did at Juno Beach

Posted: November 6, 2013 11:45 a.m.

Canadian soldiers landing at Juno Beach on the outskirts of Bernières. Photo: National Archives Canada

Two University of Regina students – Mark Jessop and Brittany Love – gained far more than work experience from their time as tour guides at the Juno Beach Centre.

“Before going over there, this chapter of history seemed very distant,” explains Jessop, a student in the Department of Film who worked at the Juno Beach Centre in the summer of 2013. 

“For me it was always just a story. But to actually go there and see the sites and meet veterans who landed on those beaches, and their family members, it makes the history seem much more real.”

He walked away from the experience with an entirely new perspective on life.

“I have a new respect for the Canadians who landed on those beaches,” said Jessop. “To see how difficult people had it back then, gives me a new understanding and appreciation of smaller things in life. We’re pretty fortunate to be living in this country today,” he says.

Brittany Love, who is majoring in French at the University of Regina, was a guide at the Juno Beach Centre from January to August 2013. She and Jessop conducted tours in both English and French and informed visitors about Canada’s contribution to the Second World War. In the process they learned a lot about WWII themselves.

“It was great to understand the human experience of war from a variety of sides,” says Love. “I learned a great deal about the occupation of France from the summer of 1940 to the liberation campaign nearly four years later, talking to folks (the elders of my town) who had experienced life under the Vichy Regime, witnessed the forced labour service, brutal interrogations by the Gestapo and sometimes public executions”.

Love had an experience talking to veterans that will stay with her for the rest of her life. She was bringing them back to their assisted living facility in Courseulles-sur-Mer when a group of the French permanent residents identified them as Canadian veterans.

“(They) were itching to speak to them,” said Love. “With all of the veterans speaking English only, I eagerly volunteered to interpret the language for them. I spent about 40 minutes with all of them, mainly just translating ‘thank you’ over and over again. The French residents were in their nineties and had lived through occupation and liberation alike. Seeing the Canadian faces once again, for them, brought up some very emotional memories. I would consider this to be a defining moment in my life, as I hope to be a language interpreter as a career someday, the image of translating their tearful stories while trying to hold back tears of my own will likely never leave my mind,” says Love.



Read the full interview with Brittany Love here. For the full interview with Mark Jessop, listen Thurs., Nov. 7, at 6:00 p.m. to the radio program University Matters on CJTR 91.3 FM Regina Community Radio, or go to http://cjtr.ca/