A regiment based in Medicine Hat helped to free a Dutch city 80 years ago — and its mayor wants to create a bond of friendship so it’s never forgotten.
Over the course of five days in November 1944, the South Alberta Regiment — now the South Alberta Light Horse — was instrumental in a Canadian effort to free the Municipality of Steenbergen.
The Alberta soldiers worked in collaboration with the Algonquin Regiment from northern Ontario and local resistance fighters to push out Nazi occupying forces, part of the broader Dutch liberation project the Canadians were charged with.
That effort led to Steenbergen’s freedom after five years of Nazi oppression, a liberty that is still celebrated today.
To enshrine that special bond, Medicine Hat’s mayor Linnsie Clark and Steenburgen’s Ruud Vendenbelt signed a proclamation of friendship Thursday with the goal of remembrance and collaboration between the two cities.
“There is no future without knowing the past,” Vendenbelt told CHAT News in an interview following a pair of ceremonies.
“What we want to do is keep the past, learn from the past and transfer it to the future. But the future [is] not the old people who are living still and the parents fighting in the war, the future [is] the children in school today.”
Vendenbelt said education is key to keeping the memory of the Second World War and its widespread impacts alive. The friendship bond, signed as the world marks Victory in Europe Day, ensures that neither municipality forgets.
A Medicine Hat High School teacher was able to take that idea and apply it in a tangible way.
Social studies teacher Ricky Hildebrand prepared a curriculum to teach students Grade 4 to 12 across the city about the Steenbergen liberation that took place decades ago.
“Education really matters in making sure that our young people know their past, and are prepared to then share that on with the next generation,” Hildebrand said.
As hundreds of Medicine Hat students learned about how Canadians pushed Nazi soldiers back from the hilly Dutch municipality during the Allied liberation of Europe, they prepared postcards depicting liberation day and the special relationship the two countries.
The postcards were sent with Vendenbelt back to Steenbergen.
After the friendship declaration was signed in front of an audience made up of veterans, a few city councillors and a smattering of residents inside city hall, the mayors crossed the road to Veterans’ Memorial Park.
There waiting was a bell gifted by Steenbergen to Medicine Hat that’s meant to be rung twice a year, once on May 4, Remembrance Day in the Netherlands, and again on the first Sunday of November, a day of remembrance worldwide.
One bell is located in Steenbergen, one is now in Medicine Hat and a third bell was given to North Bay to recognize the Algonquin Regiment that fought with the south Alberta group as part of the liberation effort. All three bells will ring at the same time in a way that ties their history and future, officials said.
“We cross oceans by connecting, remembering that our freedom is not granted, it’s not for free,” said Vendenbelt.
“I hope we can pass it on to the future and that we can keep going forever commemorating and making sure that a war like that never happens again.”
The two mayors, representing two cities 7,000 kilometres apart but tied together through history, started tolling the bell Thursday afternoon, the only time it will ring out solo.
Clark, who Vendenbelt gave a glass paperweight-sized version of the bell as a gift, said she was ecstatic the Dutch municipality wanted to build a deeper bond.
“I am just so grateful that the mayor of Steenbergen thought of us to come here,” Clark said after a ceremony that included national anthems, wreath-laying and a benediction.
“I know that they do such a good job of remembering and honouring the southern Alberta soldiers — the Canadian soldiers — that participated in liberating them,” she added.
“That’s inspiring to me, to do a bond of friendship with them so that we can continue to grow that relationship and remember together that we do not want a travesty like World War Two to occur again.”
Vendenbelt, who visited North Bay on Monday, said building relationships with a bell, proclamation and a promise to maintain ties is important amid uncertainty around the world.
“It starts small, but maybe that will grow. Because if we don’t connect, if we don’t talk to each other, then we don’t understand each other,” he said.
“And wars started with not understanding each other.”
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Dutch mayor declares renewed friendship with Medicine Hat decades after liberation – Lethbridge News Now
