VAC/Vets' funerals (merged)

[Guy. E]

What does the DVA do th help the familys in need when the unfortunate happens to them?

 

[QV]

For killed on duty I think the member's dependant(s) get $250,000 plus 75% of the member's net salary until that member would have turned 65 years old - paid out by-monthly.  Plus the SDB which is two years gross salary payed out within 72 hours of the death.  (plus any life insurance if you have it - obviously)

Double check with VA, but I just had a briefing with VA and thats the info I walked away with.  It sounds pretty damn good actually.

 

[Guy. E]

considering what had to happen for it...

 

[Armymedic]

For killed on duty I think the member's dependant(s) get $250,000 plus 75% of the member's net salary until that member would have turned 65 years old - paid out by-monthly.  Plus the SDB which is two years gross salary payed out within 72 hours of the death.  (plus any life insurance if you have it - obviously)

Double check with VA, but I just had a briefing with VA and thats the info I walked away with.  It sounds pretty damn good actually.

I am certain you are good with the SDB, minus the 72 hr thing...I am sure its longer then that, but not very. Every situation is different. 2 Yrs wages paid lump sum. Plus any SISIP life insurance they get. The military incurs any and all funeral costs.

As for DVA...where did you get that from?

 

[Guy. E]

VA was the first/ only one that came to my mind.

 

[QV]

I got that from a rep from DVA that gave us a briefing last week (as part of a pre-deployment briefing).

 

[military granny]

SURREY, British Columbia -- It's known as Operation Remembrance and it's the brainchild of RCMP Constable Marc Searle.
His idea was to mark the grave of a local veteran.

But as he started researching what would be involve in that he wondered how many other veterans lay in unmarked graves.

With the help of the Surrey's Cemetary Services and the records department from the Surrey Public Library he began his investigation.

He found that 36 vets lay without tombstones to mark their legacy to their country.

Among the 36 includes a recipient of the Military Medal for Gallantry at the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

http://www.canada.com/globaltv/national/story.html?id=9ce33c2e-76b5-4ec1-ae9b-156651746334

 

[17thRecceSgt]

As sad as it is to hear that these soldiers may have been forgotten in the past, it is blessed that they are now being remembered and honoured.  Hats off to Const. Searle and the support he has gained from...

school kids, volunteers and numerous military organizations

the 'Last Post Fund' which has the mandate and authority through Veterans Affairs to mark unmarked graves of Canadian soldiers

The Semiahmoo First Nation will attend the ceremony to bless the traditional land as will Veterans from all services and and allied forces.

Is this symbolic of a country, at least a part of it...RCMP...kids...volunteers....military... Veteran's Affairs...members of our Aboriginal community...all in B.C. coming together to salute, honour and say thanks to those who gave their all for the live and future they all enjoy and look forward to????

Hopefully...the start of a trend.

To ALL our service men and women...past...present...and future...I salute you all.  God bless.

 

[parkie]

This is heartwarming to know that someone is  acknowledging their sacrifice, The last time my son took me to our local cemetery to lay flowers on my wife's grave, I took a walk around to visit the last resting place of  some of the boy's I went to war with,I noticed a number of them,of the ones that I could find,have nothing but a small metal plaque with their name on it,that was provided by the funeral home.
Then people wonder why I vent sometimes? I won't let what has happened to soldiers of the past,Happen to the soldiers of today.

Thank you for passing this along. military granny.
                                                            parkie

 

[The Bread Guy]

Anyone have any experience with the Last Post Fund?

The poppies pinned to lapels on Remembrance Day stand for the bright red flower that once blew between the crosses marking millions of war graves in Europe.

But for as many as 30,000 soldiers buried in Canada, no one knows where their poppies blow.

They are the dead whose graves are unmarked.

"Doesn't just that make you want to scream?" said Lee MacLean, the daughter of two Second World War vets who is working to identify anonymous veterans' graves in her southern Ontario community of Haliburton County.

"It makes me want to scream because they went off to war as kids and gave their all for what we have and no one has taken it upon themselves to make sure they are remembered by a marker? That is just unconscionable to me."

Some veterans lie in cemeteries that themselves are all but forgotten. Others have been found buried in Canada's national cemetery in Ottawa.

There's no single reason for the unmarked graves. Some once had memorials, perhaps simple wooden crosses that merely disintegrated over time.

Other veterans may have had no money for a marker, said Jean-Pierre Goyer, the executive director of the Last Post Fund, a not-for-profit that runs the federal government's burial and funeral program for veterans.

"Or the headstones with time, got used up, couldn't be read anymore," Goyer said.

"The cemeteries just picked them up and threw them away."

Over the last 15 years, the Last Post Fund has sought to place a formal marker on as many graves as it can. It says that to date, over 3,000 have been marked at a cost of just under $2 million.

Cemetery records often list the fact that there is a veteran buried in the grounds, but no one has come forward to fill out the paperwork for a stone, Goyer said.

Those who seek a proper monument can simply call the fund, which will do the leg work to confirm the grave belongs to a veteran.

The total number of unmarked graves is only an estimate. The Last Post Fund says the number comes from Veterans Affairs, based on service and cemetery records ....

The Canadian Press, 8 Nov 11

 

[AJFitzpatrick]

I think I've posted this before but it is still appropriate

http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/nonmarketoperations/mountainview/military/lastpost.htm

 

[Edward Campbell]

Just another report, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Ottawa Citizen, which indicates that our bureaucracy, which reflects our values, has lost sight of what things costs:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Canadian+funeral+directors+they+paying+bury+vets/7441328/story.html

Canadian funeral directors say they’re paying to bury war vets

By Andrew Duffy

Ottawa Citizen October 24, 2012

OTTAWA — Canadian funeral directors say they’re routinely subsidizing the burials of this country’s most impoverished war veterans because the federal government pays so little for the service.

Veterans Affairs Canada provides eligible veterans with up to $3,600 for funeral services through the Last Post Fund.

But that amount — it has remained unchanged for more than a decade — now covers only about half the cost of a veteran’s funeral, according to the Funeral Service Association of Canada.

“It’s mostly the members of our association, or the families themselves, that are making up the difference,” said Phil Fredette, the association’s government relations chair.

Depending on the province, Fredette said, it now costs between $6,500 and $9,000 to provide the funeral services mandated under the Veterans Affairs Canada Funeral and Burial Program.

Among other things, the program requires funeral directors to bury war veterans in wooden caskets of a specified quality.

Some provinces, Fredette said, now pay as much or more for funeral services through social assistance.

Nova Scotia, for instance, offers $3,800 to cover the cost of a funeral and related services for a qualifying welfare recipient.

In Ontario, many municipalities pay funeral service rates of $4,000 to $5,000 for eligible social service recipients. Ottawa increased its rates last year to $4,366.

Jean-Pierre Goyer, executive director of the non-profit Last Post Fund, said “some funeral directors are not calling us anymore, they’re going right to social services.”

In other cases, he said, fund administrators have to wheel and deal with funeral directors to find a way to deliver the services for the set price.

“That’s what we’re confronted with more and more,” he said.

Goyer said his organization has petitioned the government for 12 consecutive years to raise its cap on funeral costs.

“This is something that has long been in discussion but never clears the final hurdle,” he said.

A veteran’s family or estate must meet a means test in order to qualify for assistance from the Last Post Fund. Veterans of the Second World War, Korean War, and any retired soldier who died of a service-related disability are eligible.

Serving members of the Canadian Forces receive up to $12,700 for funeral expenses.

The Last Post Fund provides assistance to about 1,800 veterans each year. Each one of those funerals costs Canadian funeral directors money, Fredette said.

“You won’t find a single funeral director in Canada who will refuse to do a veteran’s funeral regardless of what the government pays: it’s a service to our country. All we want is fairness.”

The association will hold a board meeting in Ottawa this week, during which time it will meet with 20 MPs to press their case.

“We think it’s important to give veterans the dignified funeral and burial services that they deserve,” Fredette said.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

My main point is that we, all of us, "tell" our governments, at the voting both, through polls and directly, by letters and E-mails, that we want budgets cut. We don't tell them to not cut on the backs of vets.

 

[dapaterson]

The bureaucracy does not set rates; elected officials, through the Treasury Board, do.

 

[The Bread Guy]

The Minister's excuse:  it's the Liberals' fault!  This from Question Period yesterday:

.... the best thing anyone can do here as members of this House to help veterans would be to stand up and support the concrete measures the Conservative government is bringing forward to help our veterans.  Unfortunately, we regularly see the NDP refuse to support our veterans, when it comes to programs aimed at improving their quality of life as well as programs we are putting in place to provide them with services.  We will continue to defend our veterans and work with associations .... We have been standing up for veterans, and the one thing I can assure the member we will not do is cut the funeral and burial program, as the Liberals did. We will stand by our veterans.

 

[The Bread Guy]

This one appears to be gaining further media traction - editorials supporting more money for vets' funeral costs in the Globe, the Toronto Star and the Ottawa Citizen.

 

[GAP]

From everything I have read....it is the funeral directors who want to be paid more that are driving this whole thing.....then it got refocused on the "poor" vetern.  :dunno:

 

[The Bread Guy]

From everything I have read....it is the funeral directors who want to be paid more that are driving this whole thing.....then it got refocused on the "poor" vetern.  :dunno:

Private-sector media?  Supporting business? 

 

[Rifleman62]

You would think that successive Ministers responsible for VAC would have enough horse sense to initiate the required increase from TB. Just shows how responsive VAC is.

Rfn Ferris died recently and this is how a grateful Nation/Government treats him. He died hoping to see his estranged daughters who he had not seen for twenty-five years. He did not. Life was not always great for Ferris. His experiences as a young man scared him forever.  He survived almost being murdered. Others did not.

Photo was a recent snap, and the Wpg Free Press 1944 announcement that he was missing.

Rfn Ferris's story as just published in The Devils' Blast is below the Wpg Sun extracts.


An editorial in the Winnipeg Sun Thursday November 1 2012. The editorial was titled “ Valiant vets deserve better”, It has been partially inspired by the burial of our Rifleman Gordon Ferris.

CTV National News will be carrying a story next week, regarding the Last Post funeral for Ferris. I was asked to take part in the telecast. The Last Post fund have refused to pay $1200.00 of the cost of his funeral which has been shared by the Funeral Home and Mr. Garth Asham. Mr. Asham  and his wife  were  adopted family to Ferris for the past number of years.  They more or less looked after him.

A quote from the editorial: 
   

Earlier this month a red faced Veteran Affairs ended a policy of clawing back benefit payments of disabled veterans, after  a Federal Court gave it proper hell.
    We condemned that Claw back when it first came to light, and we condemn today the need for our wounded veterans to sue Ottawa for fair treatment.
  And what about the protest of our dying  veterans of the second world war and Korea who cannot get a proper  burial unless funeral home directors supplement the costs? 
  The estates of current members of the Canadian Armed Forces, and the RCMP are awarded $12,700.00 towards burial of their kin, but not the fragile vets who have precious little time left in their valiant lives.

Their deaths, apparently are only worth  $3600.00.

Our message to veterans affairs?

Show some respect ,honor the sacrifices, and pay what is needed.

Lest you have already forgotten.     

 

The Devils' Blast article:


Rifleman Gordon James Ferris
Late, The Royal Winnipeg Rifles

Today we pay our last respects to a Hero, of the Second World War. A soldier who had the quick sense with several other of his comrades to survive an attempt by the enemy to murder them, to commit a war crime.

Rifleman Gordon James Ferris, a member of the Royal Winnipeg Rifle, was taken prisoner of war by the German SS after the battle at Putot en Basin, Normandy, France.  Landing two days before, on Juno Beach, on the morning of June 6, 1944, the Rifles quickly moved inland.
The battle outside of the village of Putot followed and Ferris with some of sixty of his comrades, who were captured as Prisoners of War, two of them on stretchers were being marched behind German lines, and I quote here, from evidence given at the trial of German General Kurt Meyer, commander of the German forces in Normandy, by 37 year old Cpl. Hector Clement MacLean Regimental Number H-41725 of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles. The wounded veteran a native of Inverness Town, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia 

MacLean and his companions were marched down a dirt road. He testified there were ten guards under command of a Sergeant, when they came across “a German vehicle with camouflage and there was a German officer there later identified as SS Colonel Mohnke. “The Sergeant who was in charge of us went up to him to ask him where he would take us, that is the best of my knowledge as to his actions”
“The officer threatened to strike the Sergeant for asking him where he would take us---which seemed to me by his actions, and the officer pointed in the direction in which we were going. Then we were marched off in that direction until we came within 100 yards of a big row of trees, and then we were turned off this trail right, and had gone about 100 yards and was wheeled about and made to sit down in the field. That was the first place I looked for my escape.     

Cpl McLean in his testimony told how they were to sit in this stubble field, a vehicle drove up and some ten German soldiers climbed out with machine guns. They formed in to a firing squad and MacLean continued” the order was given to fire. I and a number of others jumped up and made a break for it and escaped into what I think was a grain field. He sustained a flesh wound from the firing squad in his right leg,  and said that the grain was tall enough for him to run while dodging bullets for two or three minutes. The murdering took place late in the day according to the witness, “the sun had set, and it was almost dark.”

Asked by the enquiry if he could identify any of the captive officers and men. He testified three officers from the Royal Canadian Artillery, one sergeant, five corporals and seven Riflemen, including Gordon James Ferris.

Asked by the prosecuting officer what happened after the escape into the wheat field MacLean stated “Sir, several Gerries started to come toward me after I got into the grain field---I saw five or six Gerries all firing at the same time. I went on my hands and knees as far as I could go, to get as far away as I could, and they seemed to be getting closer and then I got to my feet and took off as fast as I could move and then I met Rfn Ferris in the grain field. I thought he was German but he spoke first and I recognized his voice, and then we joined one another and continued to travel fast to get out!”

The Corporal described how the two of them continued to cross country, looking for a trace of their own lines. However we continued on and came to a German tank harbor, and went in the ditch there. There was a hedge row and I tried to dress my wounds, along with the help of Rfn Ferris.

By the night of the tenth they were still looking for their own lines however they were spotted by a German tank crew and after a severe roughing up and the third gunshot wound to MacLean, they were taken back to the tank. They were told to sit down at the base of a tree and a German sergeant with Schmeizer machine gun waving at them and saying Kaput, Kaput. (See the Trial Of Kurt Meyer in this issue).

Rfn Gordon Ferris’s records state: “Missing 8 June 44 Unit RWR. Embarked at UK on June 6th 44, disembarked in France on June 6th 44, the next line previously reported missing now POW in Stalag 12A POW number unstated.The next entry said previously reported POW, Now in Stalag 4B POW number 84850 and the last line stated, now safe in the United Kingdom 14 May 1945. Nine months in conditions we know were not in any way, kind or comfortable.

I never knew Gordon Ferris, I heard of him in travels to Normandy and research for newspaper articles and for twenty years searched for him here in Portage la Prairie. It was only after I told the story to another Ferris citizen that he phoned me to tell me to enquire into the death of Gordon who died Monday August 13th. I was given direction from the funeral home here, to contact Len and Blanche Asham who were a second family to Gordon. They supplied me with much information and copies of his records which I find a historical part of Canadian history. I found out for the first time, that prior to his capture he was the Regimental Bugler for the Royal Winnipeg Rifles.

We hear a great deal today about PTSD, and in many cases we are told this did not exist, however when I see and read of the many problems  veterans, of yesterday, today and tomorrow have gone through, I realize we have a great deal to do to help and make their postwar trauma as easy as possible.

Rest in Peace, Rifleman Ferris, the meaning of your sacrifice and those of your comrade’s rests with our collective national consciousness: our future is their monument. 

Ian MacKenzie
The Royal Winnipeg Rifles Senate