{"id":126172,"date":"2022-11-09T23:17:50","date_gmt":"2022-11-10T04:17:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/?p=126172"},"modified":"2022-11-10T09:22:46","modified_gmt":"2022-11-10T14:22:46","slug":"a-lone-survivor-world-war-ll-veteran-is-the-last-of-his-kind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/a-lone-survivor-world-war-ll-veteran-is-the-last-of-his-kind\/","title":{"rendered":"A lone survivor: Hazelton World War ll veteran is the last of his kind"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At 97, <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lawrence Allen Kerr may be one of the last veterans of the Second World War living in northern BC.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kerr was 16 when he left Climax, Saskatchewan to train in the Canadian Army in Regina. From there, he went by train to Cornwallis, Nova Scotia to join the navy, where he met his wife Pearl.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was his first time seeing \u201cbig water\u201d because he said \u201cthere was no water where I was from,\u201d and then he spent his time in the navy guarding merchant ships as a gunner during the war.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He spent the next four years overseas mainly on the North Atlantic then began his life with his wife in British Columbia.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And at 97, Kerr remains spritely: he continues to drive, hunt, fish and \u201ceven has a treadmill in his living room.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2020, he was the last surviving World War ll veteran marching in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.interior-news.com\/tag\/remembrance-day\/\">Smithers Remembrance Day ceremony<\/a>, and will be the only World War ll vet marching this year in Hazelton.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2020, the CBC wrote an article claiming that there were under <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/sudbury\/sudbury-diminishing-second-world-war-veterans-future-rememberance-day-1.5795828\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">40,000 World War ll veterans alive in Canada<\/a>, and to put it into perspective, over 1 million Canadians fought in World War II.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kerr shared his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.veterans.gc.ca\/eng\/remembrance\/information-for\/educators\/quick-facts\/second-world-war\">memories from war time<\/a> with CICK News producer Pam Haasen in an interview for CICK News\u2019 Remembrance Day episode.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Listen to that full interview in the link below:<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At 97, Lawrence Allen Kerr may be one of the last veterans of the Second World War living in northern BC.\u00a0 Kerr was 16 when he left Climax, Saskatchewan to train in the Canadian Army in Regina. From there, he went by train to Cornwallis, Nova Scotia to join the navy, where he met his&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":126179,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[219,3265],"tags":[3683,633,12483,20562,20563,2701,654,3021,20564,20560,20561],"radio":[245],"origine":[280,263,231],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126172"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126172"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126193,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126172\/revisions\/126193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126172"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=126172"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=126172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}