Remembrance Day is a family affair for Dan Doctor.
The 65-year-old Indigenous man comes from a big military family, as his grandfather, father, uncles, and brothers all served in the Canadian military.
“To me it’s a solemn day and I remember all my family and particularly things like what my grandfather gave up,” said Doctor, who served himself from 1981 until 1990 in Canada’s air force.
Isaac Doctor served in the Canadian army in both world wars, and in what they call Brock’s Rangers, the 114th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, in the First World War.
“Back in those days, he’d be in the trenches and he’d be fighting in clothes that you would wear to school. They didn’t have winter gear, rain gear like they do now. They didn’t even have gas masks," said Dan, who laid a wreath today on behalf of the Indigenous students at Georgian College’s Barrie campus Nov. 11 ceremonies.
“It gives me a lot of pride,” he explained. “It’s everything I can do to fight back tears every time I go up to put the wreath down. I have so much pride.”
Dan’s family is from Six Nations of the Grand River, just outside of Brantford, but he was raised in Brantford.
He was an avionics technician in the Canadian air force, working on aircraft — mostly anti-submarine aircraft — but also the Sea King helicopters, serving in Nova Scotia and Kingston, Ont., including as an electronics instructor at Royal Military College of Canada.
“Back in those days, if you were (Indigenous) — I’m fairly light skinned — so if you were you kind of kept it to yourself,” he said.
Dan’s father, Walter, was also in Canada’s air force and worked on installing this country’s early warning radar system.
His brothers were both in the Royal Canadian Regiment (infantry, Canadian army). Walter served from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, while Lloyd served from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s — almost all in Germany, where he still lives.
But Dan’s grandfather seems to be uppermost in his mind this Remembrance Day.
“My grandfather served in an all-Native regiment in World War One,” he said. “Not to mention he gave up a pension. When he was in, if you wanted to collect a pension you had to give up your Indian status, which they called ‘enfranchisement’. A lot of people don’t know about that.”
Dan came to the Barrie area in 1996 to work at Casino Rama, and because he was an electronics specialist in the air force, he ran the technical department there.
But Nov. 11 is still special to him on so many levels.
“And it’s funny, in my family, because we’re such a military family, it’s like the sentimental day of the year,” he said. “I get calls from my brothers and sisters, who will call just to say hi.”
