Lalonde, Roland

Roland Lalonde was born July 8, 1923 in Ottawa, into a large family of eight boys and three girls. He did his schooling in Ottawa, finishing after Grade 10.  Roly grew up during the difficult days of the Great Depression, but he recalls that his father always had work, and that the family made ends meet. Roly was a young boy in those years, and for him that meant all kinds of sports – and an afternoon at the movies if he had a few coins. He then went to work as a clerk/typist for Canada Customs and Excise, choosing to join the military in 1942, where he was initially assigned to the Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps. Roly’s brothers just about all served too – in World War Two and the postwar occupation and in the Korean War as well. Roly went into training and in short order he was on his way overseas to England; he did have one last detail to settle first though – he got married! His wedding was scheduled for August 1943, and his fiancée Claire was determined that they would keep the date, which was August 5. Soon after he was on a train to Nova Scotia, and then he was sent to England aboard the troopship RMS Queen Elizabeth. He was posted to #5 Vehicle Reserve Depot (#5VRD) in Chilworth and was stationed there for about a year. The invasion took place on June 6, 1944, and by July 1944, there was no work left for him in England. Roly was sent to Italy as an infantry reinforcement, landing in Italy in August 1944, and he was assigned to ‘C’ Company, Royal 22nd Regiment, in Avellino. On his first day with the unit, they were bombarded by German mortar fire. They moved north along the Adriatic Coast, taking locations such as San Marino and fighting along the Senio River near Ravenna. He remained in Italy until the regiment moved with the First Canadian Corps to Northwest Europe in March 1945; there they continued fighting until the end of the war, moving through Belgium, Holland and Germany. The scenes of liberation in Holland were especially memorable to Roly and so many of the other Canadian soldiers. Roland arrived back in Canada in October 1945 and was met with celebration – he also met his young daughter, who was one-and-a-half by that time. Roland relocated to Perley Health Veterans Care Centre in his late nineties, where he has developed quite the reputation as an artist, and that is where Scott Masters met him in July 2026.