For over 15 years drivers going along HWY 400 near Parry Sound have spotted Canadian flags placed on the rock cut.
Ever since 2007, Parry Sound area local William Edward House, who goes by Ted, has been putting up the flags in honour of his grandfather, grandmother, father and two uncles.
“My grandfather died in 1938 from war wounds of the First World War when he was only 42. A year later, in 1939, World War Two started so my father and his two brothers enlisted in the Canadian Army on overseas service. They felt a sense of duty and were quite motivated to go to war, because of the recent death of their father,” he says.
Ted says his grandmother then joined the war effort herself by signing up with the Red Cross where she was posted as a Lance Corporal in 1941.
“You’ve got to understand her thinking. She just lost her husband and now she just lost three boys who were gone to war. You can imagine sleeping at night and trying to think of all the things that could happen. The reason was she wanted to be near her sons,” he says.
Ted says he is very grateful, honoured and proud of his family and all the families of the Canadians who fought in the two World Wars.
He first put them up in 2007, when his son, David, was 14.
“I finally decided to put the flag up on the highway near where I live to honour Canada and to be grateful for being here, in peace and to be safe only because of the people that fought in these wars including my family,” he says.
“When it first started, I put up four flags, two up very high and two down low. But the ones down low, they didn’t last a week because someone would steal it. So, the higher ones were certainly the definite ones. I use a very long ladder and the flags are about 25 feet in the air,” he says.
Ted says first two flags are drilled on the rock cut he now calls “Canada”. He says the third flag is on a hydro pier holding up a guy wire for a transmission line.
Ted’s father, mother and two uncles were featured, a month shy of exactly 80 years ago, in a newspaper called the Toronto Telegram.
“It’s gone now, but back then they picked up the story of the four of them on August 25, 1943. They wanted just to show how much a family can do for their country. And I just thought it was wonderful. I have a copy of it, of course. Something to be proud of,”.
Ted says he’s been putting up the flags since 2007 around the start of the new year.
The flags are located on the 400 near the Jolly Roger in Parry Sound.