Strathmore honours veteran, stops man from dying alone

By Miriam Ostermann, Associate Editor

It was a kick to the gut. Scott Vanderveer had just spent an hour at the bedside of terminally ill former Master Cpl. Thomas McKenzie – a man he thought he didn’t know – until he passed away from throat cancer.
Vanderveer, his wife Heather and two other veterans sat with the 55-year-old McKenzie, who never woke up during their visit, after his palliative-care nurse posted a message to various social media groups requesting someone to sit with the corporal – estranged from his family and friends – so he wouldn’t die alone.
An hour after Vanderveer arrived at the Strathmore hospital following a phone call that McKenzie had taken a turn for the worse, the veteran took his last breath.
Vanderveer agreed with the others to honour the man the hospital referred to only as Thomas with a memorial. As he checked the door to find out McKenzie’s last name, all Vanderveer could say was, “it’s not Thomas, it’s Tom,” – the Canadian Forces vehicle technician he worked beside at the Calgary base in the mid 1980s. Unable to leave a brother behind, McKenzie received a memorial in Kinsmen Park on Dec. 9 attended by roughly 75 people; members of the fire departments, military, RCMP and citizens.
“Some of the Facebook pages I belong to, the nurse of the hospital had put up a thing that this gentleman was going to pass way without anyone there, and being a veteran, Heather and I looked at one another and said ‘no, can’t have that,’” recalled Vanderveer.
“As I looked at the door, that kind of hit. You know the guy, you worked with him a bit, didn’t know him really well, but I knew him and I knew he was my age and it kicked at the gut. He was the kind of guy who would give you the shirt off his back. He was a really good guy.”
McKenzie worked as a vehicle technician for 12 years before retiring from the Canadian military. For the last decade, he had cut off all contact to family and friends.
While Vanderveer can relate, noting that often veterans distance themselves from anyone with ties to the military, the Strathmore Royal Canadian Legion Branch No. 10 president Jenny Schumann said a lot of times veterans fall through the cracks.
“He lived in Strathmore for quite some time, but like lots of veterans, if they don’t come to the legion, we don’t know about them; and I wish I knew him, he just sounded like somebody you would want to know,” Schumann said, who also attended the memorial.
“For some reason, back in the old days it had a bad reputation where they used to come and sit and drink. There are so many civilians in here and we don’t even know what they’ve been through. There’re too many people who judge. They judge the wrong way. That’s not right, that’s totally what the legion is not about, we’re about serving our veterans and helping them and their families.”
Before McKenzie passed, Heather Vanderveer organized a Quilt of Valour, a handmade quilt presented to past and present Canadian Forces members to recognize their support and service to the country. While McKenzie wasn’t conscious during his last hours, Heather said they wrapped him in the blanket and just started a conversation.
“I had unwrapped the Quilt of Valour and we wrapped him in it, we told him that it was a gift from the people of Canada and that he is cared for and that he’s loved, and then the four of us stood around talking like soldiers do and talked to him like he was in the room,” she said.
“We talked with his one and only friend Mark (Erwin) and said we need to hold a memorial for Thomas. He said, ‘well this isn’t want Thomas wanted,’ and we all went ‘well too bad, he’s not here to argue.’ We felt it was important that we recognize him, and so the entire Strathmore community has been amazing in stepping forward to attend the memorial.”
In next to no time after the message was posted online, the post had reached Newfoundland. Scott Vanderveer was fielding messages from people wanting to send get well cards, Christmas cards and nearly 40 Quilts of Valour.
On Dec. 9, Harvest Healing Centre Church’s Pastor Elizabeth Karp led the service, while retired Canadian Forces Maj. C. J. Wallace also honoured McKenzie’s memory. McKenzie had been Wallace’s driver in the 1980s, and for years Wallace had tried to track him down without success, he told those in attendance last week. According to Schumann, McKenzie’s brother and sister, Leslie McArthur, also travelled across the country to attend the service. McArthur spoke about how her brother was her stem cell transplant match for leukemia in 2001.
The stories shared at the memorial all told stories of a man who was dedicated to his job until the very end, who was loved and had a good sense of humour.
“Us veterans, we’re a very peculiar group of people and we understand each other. We may not know each other personally, but we can completely relate to each other and we’re always military, we’re never civilians,” said Heather Vanderveer.
“I know people are always saying ‘what a great thing, you did this for someone you didn’t know,’ but as we always like to tell everybody, even though we may not have known each other personally, we still have the same military blood running through our veins and that was a brother. It didn’t matter if we knew him.”