By Shari Narine, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter Lynn Gehl was in her thirties when she finally started to learn the story of her great-grandfather Joseph Gagnon from Golden Lake Reserve (now known as Pikwakanagan First Nation) in Ontario. In Joseph Gagnon: An Algonquin World War 1 Veteran, Gehl outlines the way her great-grandfather suffered from discrimination when it came to Canada’s implementation of policies for Indigenous veterans. “I reconnected with my grandmother and her brother Gordon, and they told me where (Joseph) was buried and they told me that he didn’t have a gravestone,” said Gehl. In accordance with the Last Post Fund, which has been in place since 1909, no veteran is to be denied a “dignified funeral and burial, as well as a military gravestone, due to insufficient…
Register
