Flight Sergeant Pilot Erlyn Kirby was just 21 when he died eighty years ago.
Kirby, from the northeastern Alberta community of Waskatenau, was reported killed in action when the Wellington bomber he was piloting was shot down over Germany on May 6, 1941. There is no known grave for the young man — but about 15 years ago, his memory ... and the Distinguished Flying Cross he was posthumously awarded ... was recognized with a cairn at a northern Alberta lake named in his honour.
A recent act of vandalism destroyed parts of the memorial marker, but the same actions have also highlighted the kindness of strangers.
The monument is one of more than a dozen similar markers created by the Lac La Biche-based volunteer group the Airmen's Memorial Cairn Committee in 2006. The cairns were built to honour Canadian airmen killed during the Second World War at area lakes carrying their names. The concrete cenotaphs were constructed on-site and fitted with large, brass-based plaques describing the person honoured and their ultimate wartime sacrifices.
Sometime in the last few years, someone took an axe to Kirby's monument.
Located about 20 kilometres east of Highway 881 in remote boreal forest on the quiet shores of Kirby Lake near Winefred Lake, vandals used axes to chop and smash the plaques off the concrete marker. The strikes were so hard that blade cuts obliterated words on the markers. The plaques were torn from the cairn, sheering off bolts as they were ripped away, and left scattered around the remote and once-thought peaceful location. The monument, honouring 21 years of a young Alberta man's life, a monument that had been created after years of planning by a local community group, was destroyed in hours by vandals.
Time and effort
Like the planning done by the Lac La Biche Airmen's Memorial Cairn Committee, restoration of the damage also took years.
Joan Grozell was an Indigenous liaison with oil companies operating in northeastern Alberta until 2018. She was in the Kirby Lake area when she came across the damaged cairn. Not familiar with the history of the memorial cairn project, Grozell still realized the marker was important, so she took the plaques and paid to have the lettering repaired. It was a long process taking many months to complete. More than a year later, through contacts in the industry, Lac La Biche's Vic Toutant, now with Little Divide Environment Services, learned about the plaques — which now had their lettering repaired, but were still bent and twisted. He offered to work on the next stage of the fix.
"They were still in bad shape. Joan's help had got the words looking good, but the plaques themselves were still bent to crap," he said, explaining that over the course of the next year, he balanced a busy day job with finding a way to carefully restore the brass plates.
A passing conversation with a couple of local businessmen specializing in off-highway vehicle repairs and rentals lead to an answer.
"I was getting some work done with Norm Charest and Rob Kruk at Full Tilt Power Sports and I just mentioned that I had these brass plaques ... they said they had a press and could give it a shot," Toutant said.
It took a lot of twisting and bending, but the shot worked.
Broken bolts that had been sheered off in the plaques were also drill-pressed out by Toutant over the course of the next few weeks.
The end result brought the plaques back to the original shape as they had been when the Airmen's Memorial Cairn group had first installed them.
Last week, Toutant and Winefred Lake Outfitters' owner Paul Padlesky made the trek to the remote cairn site. The two re-installed the plaques, capping off years of work, carried out by several people, to restore an important piece of history. Toutant was proud to have been a part of the project.
"Everyone pitched in and did their part," he said, adding that despite the pride, he is frustrated that someone would have damaged the monument in the first place.
"I really can't understand for the life of me why someone would have smashed it up," said Toutant. "It's terrible that someone would think to do that."
There was no police report made about the initial vandalism to the cairn.
Some of the other cairns in the area are at locations near Spankie, Dabbs, Roseland, Birkland, Horne, Pullar and McGuffin lakes.
Toutant hopes back-country visitors who see the cairns will respect them as they were intended, and recognize the lives they represent.
"If it hadn't been for this young man, and men and women like him sacrificing all they did ... none of us might be here today."
