Banners hung downtown for Remembrance Day

By Courtney Bachar/The Oshawa Express/LJI Reporter

Every year on Remembrance Day, Canadians across the nation take time to honour those past, present and future who have and are fighting for our country.

Locally, hundreds of residents gather at the cenotaph in Memorial Park in downtown Oshawa for a Remembrance Day parade and ceremony. This year, that ceremony will be held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Additionally, every year the Royal Canadian Legion Oshawa branch and Oshawa Power work together to hang banners downtown honouring local military veterans. Each banner has the name and picture of a member of the community who has served with a branch of the Canadian military.

This year, five new banners were added on the streets of downtown Oshawa as one local resident wanted to pay tribute to her family who also served in the military.

“I saw the banners for the first time last year, I made inquiries with the Legion, filled out the application and submitted the information,” says Oshawa resident Terri Normoyle.

She had five banners made in honour of her family, which hang on Simcoe Street near the armoury. One is in honour of her uncle, Robert James Normoyle, who was the oldest and longest serving of all the brothers. He signed up in 1939.

“He was in the Royal Regiment until his regiment got wiped out at Dieppe. He was one of the few survivors from his regiment to return because they were mostly killed or captured,” says Normoyle.

She says her father, Daniel Dennis Normoyle, also has a banner.

“We always assumed he was with the Ontario Regiment,” she says, noting he was supposed to be shipped overseas but only got as far as Halifax.

She explains he had pneumonia as a child and didn’t pass the physical.

“So he trained transport drivers at Camp Borden.”

Her other two uncles, Patrick Joseph Normoyle, who served with the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment in Picton, and Gregory Francis Normoyle, the youngest of the brothers who served with the Royal Regiment, are also represented on the banners.

“The brothers were all wounded when they were overseas from their action, except my father,” she says.

Her brother, Robert Dennis Normoyle, served in the Navy from 1960 to 1963 and was based in Halifax and served on the HMCS Micmac and HMCS Iroquois. His banner hangs next to his father’s banner downtown.

“We were pretty proud,” she says, noting some of her cousins and her sister joined her for the occasion.

“It was good. We had quite a family grouping for that,” she adds.

Having been a history teacher for 25 years at Paul Dwyer Catholic High School, history has always been a life-long passion for Normoyle.

“I’ve been interested in history all my life, and of course I knew about my father and his brothers as long as I can remember,” she says. “And when I was just about 11, my brother enlisted in the Navy, so we’ve had this interest and support of the military all my life.”

She says she’s always been very honoured and fascinated about her father and his brothers

“They probably considered themselves just ordinary people and yet, they had no problem about signing up to serve their country,” she says.

Normoyle has travelled to Europe on three military tours to learn more about her family’s history. She first went to Europe in 2004, followed by a trip to Italy in 2014, and again in 2015 for the anniversary of the Liberation of the Netherlands. Since then, she’s also travelled with a small tour group to Vimy for the anniversary of Vimy Ridge.

“The travelling was very moving. It really brings everything home,” says Terri. “It makes everything real and it reinforces why we must never go to war so that those kinds of sacrifices are not required of other families.”