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All invited to Decoration Day in Thorold

The Thorold Legion invites all Thorold adults to join them in celebrating Decoration Day this weekend with live music and a barbecue

Among the nine soldiers who were killed in the Fenian Raids, three were University of Toronto student volunteer riflemen, who’d abandoned their final exams the day before and were thrown into combat against Irish-American Fenian insurgents who had invaded Canada across the Niagara River near Fort Erie.

The Ridgeway Nine are the modern Canadian military’s first nine combat casualties, but the young men killed that summer day in 1866 were quickly forgotten by the politicians in Ottawa who had sent them to their deaths, along with another 22 soldiers who later died from wounds and disease contracted while fighting in the Fenian Raids.

In 1890, frustrated with being forgotten for 24 years, the surviving middle-aged veterans protested on the June 2 anniversary of the Battle of Ridgeway by laying flowers and wreaths at the Canadian Volunteers Monument near Queen’s Park, Toronto’s oldest standing public monument.

The event became Decoration Day, an annual tradition that endured until 1930 and is still commemorated today in some communities in the Niagara-Welland-Fort Erie region where the 1866 battle was fought. Placing decorations on the veterans’ graves finally resulted in the creation of a British service medal recognizing Canadians in the pre-war conflicts, with Ontario providing recognition at the provincial level.

Decoration Day eventually grew to include Canadian soldiers killed in the Northwest Rebellion of 1885, and the South African War (Boer War) of 1899-1902, and even the Great War, whose casualties were commemorated in June before there was any armistice in November of 1918.


Each year, the Thorold Legion celebrates Decoration Day and the members will host a fundraising Barbecue at Branch 17 this Saturday, June 1, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., followed by live music with DJINO and the Big Dave Trio, at 3 Ormond Street South. All adults in the community are welcome.

Then on Sunday, June 2 members will march in the annual Decoration Day Parade to honour military forces and veterans. The parade will form in the parking lot behind Branch 17 at 12:45 p.m. and leave at 1:00 p.m., said Jeannie Soper, “proceeding to the Battle of Beaverdams Park for the first part of our service and the laying of wreaths to honour our fallen American comrades. The parade will then proceed on to the cenotaph at Memorial Park for the conclusion of our service and the laying of wreaths to honour our fallen comrades.”

As always, American Legion Post 105 comrades from the town of Northeast, Pennsylvania will make their annual visit to Thorold to join in Decoration Day celebrations. The cross-border visiting between the two branches is a time-honoured tradition, and each year, the Americans lay a wreath for the Unknown U.S. soldier from the War of 1812, who is buried at the Battle of Beaverdams Park.