This Sunday we honoured our Peace Officers and First Responders at our Appreciation day. We also explored the history of our stain-glassed window dedicated over 100 years ago to God's glory and in Loving memory of Elizabeth White-Fraser and placed in the church by the Woman of the parish in 1913. She was loved in the community and was remembered for her operatic recitals in the church. We also looked at the life of Montague White-Fraser, her husband and a retired NWMP/RCMP Officer. The White-Fraser couple had been born into wealth and society. They brought this vision with them from Scotland to Canada's West.
In his service he had contracted PTSD which overwhelmed his life and that affect was compounded when his beloved wife died in 1907 in Agassiz. God calls us to Love God, others and ourselves. We often through our dedication and service as well as our internal insecurity deny loving ourselves which can lead to burn out and an inability to serve and in extreme circumstance care about others or ourselves and even death.
Commander White-Fraser's PTSD led him to a failed broken life to the degree that when he died in 1927 there was no money left to bury him and erect a headstone in the historical Kent Cemetery. He was known as the "Mountie who Lost his Name". The RCMP Vetern's Association has now stepped forward to place a headstone next to his wife in the cemetery. Loving community has helped him recover his name. In God we are all remembered. It is important that as Christians we remember God, the community and also ourselves and families in a balanced loving manner.
