Bill McVean will talk on the role of Canadian engineers in the evacuation of British 1st Airborne paratroopers from Operation Market Garden at Arnhem-Oosterbeek, Netherlands in 1944.

After nine days of fighting at Arnhem (A Bridge Too Far) about 2400 of surrounded British Airborne troops were evacuated across the Rhine River to safety on the south side of the river by the 23rd Field Company Royal Canadian Engineers.  Bill will talk about the Canadian effort to evacuate the airborne troops citing his extensive research and interviews with some of the Canadian engineers involved.

Doors open at 6:30 and the presentation starts at 7:00 pm, followed by a question period.

Evacuation of the British Airborne from Arnheim 1944 by the 23rd Royal Canadian Engineers is presented by Bill McVean. The lecture premiered in-person at the Civic Museum, and online via our Facebook livestream The recorded conversation is available on Facebook, YouTube, and our Museum Everywhere Portal.  Guelph Museums’ Military Lecture series is presented in partnership with the Laurier Centre for the Study of Canada.

About Bill McVean:

Bill McVean was a career railroader, 21 years as Trainman and Conductor and 21 years as Rail Traffic Controller (dispatcher), the entire time a rail historian. Bill’s said at the time, “until I have walked every old Canadian railbed I have no interesting leaving this country.”

That changed in 2007 when Bill accompanied his mother on The Bridge Too Far Battlefield Tour to Arnhem, in the Netherlands.  Bill Senior was a World War II Tail Gunner with the RCAF and after retirement the McVeans travelled on many battlefield tours.  After her husband’s death Mrs. McVean wanted to return to Arnhem to attend the memorial service in the Oosterbeek Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery, to see Dutch school children place flowers on all the 1500 graves of Arnhem casualties.

Bill joined an outgrowth of the Arnhem Veterans Club, called the Arnhem 1944 Fellowship, which now welcomes interested parties to join Arnhem veterans continuing the legacy. One of the activities of the new group is the annual battlefield walk/talk each September. In 2013, Bill McVean presented Operation Berlin and the story of the Canadian action in the evacuation of the British 1st Airborne from Arnhem. It was delivered with the Rhine River in the background, displaying a 1943 Evinrude 50HP Model 8008 Outboard Motor, the same make, model and year used by the Canadian Royal Engineers in the action 70 years before.