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In the spring of 2019, I was informed that there would be a special event titled “Spies in the Cemetery” at Beechwood Cemetery (BC) in Ottawa on the 9th of May. I was invited to prepare a display on clandestine tradecraft using artifacts from my collection from the Cold War and prior. I read in the original email invitation that BC representative Nicholas McCarthy had information on Canadian WW2 spies buried at Beechwood – that greatly piqued my interest and I asked Nicholas about the identity of those individuals. He replied that they were pilots in WW2 on either bombing or reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines. I replied that even though these would indeed be brave endeavours, they were still not spies per se (unless perhaps if they landed agents in enemy territory as was often done with Lysander planes). I recalled that there was an excellent pamphlet titled "Uncommon Courage" published in 1985 by Canada’s Ministry of Veterans Affairs – that publication identified approximately 108 Canadians who took on missions behind enemy lines as SOE or MI-9 agents during WW2. I decided to look at each one alphabetically and google the name along with the string “Beechwood Cemetery” – the first hit was for Lucien Durocher which lead me to this RC-Sigs website which indicated he was a graduate of RC-Sigs and was born in 1920 and died in 1985. This RC-Sigs website and Roy McLaren’s book “Canadians Behind Enemy Lines” (published in 1981) indicated that he was born in Casselman Ontario – so the next step was to have Nicholas at BC validate this fact from their files. He was able to confirm that this was indeed the case in addition to this family detail: “Denis is named as son – Parents are Arthur Durocher and Joséphine Poirier”. I eventually came across a geneological website (http://geneofun.on.ca/names/photo/2654142 which is no longer accessible) which contained a photo of his headstone at BC thereby confirming the RC-Sigs component! I also found this website showing his gravestone as well. Given this research and discovery, I was asked to offer a short talk on Lucien Durocher at the "Spies in the Cemetery" event - I provided the main findings while quoting him from an article from the Ottawa Journal titled "Lt. Lucien Durocher Ottawa Chutist Tells of Adventures", an edition from 16 February 1945. After that talk, I felt determined to find Lucien's son Denis - I searched online in the Ottawa/Gatineau region for any “Denis Durocher” but there were too many. I decided to track Denis starting with the only information that I had, namely his parents names. Although unable to find the obituary for Arthur, I was able to find that of his brother Roland which indicated that he had many children (including any married names) – of particular note was Nicolle Alkenbrack which was promising as her name was certainly uncommon! Further research eventually brought about my getting a Twitter account in order to attempt reaching one Nicolle Alkenbrack in Saskatchewan – this proved to be an "Eureka" moment and she put me in touch with Denis Durocher who, it turns out, lives not far from Casselman! Denis informed me that Lucien had another son Jean and a daughter Anne. Following my first phone call to Denis, it was decided that both Denis and Jean would come visit my collection and more importantly, have a discussion about their father Lucien. Meeting Denis, Suzane (Denis’ wife) and Jean was a very warm and most positive encounter especially since they did not know about Lucien being an agent in WW2! However, they were aware that he had served in Europe in WW2. They provided much information, insight and photographs which I used to write an article in the Beechwood Cemetery magazine titled “LT. LUCIEN JOSEPH DUROCHER” which is accessible through this online PDF document - it is the last article in the magazine. If you are to read only one item from this webpage, it would have to be the latter online document! |
