A Ladner man recently returned to his roots to pay tribute to his father and a generation of his family now gone.
Ron McLaren recently returned from Forfar, Scotland, which is on the northeast side of the country, where he and four of his cousins planted a Rowan tree, which are native to the area, and installed a plaque on the former family farm where his father George McLaren and his three siblings were all born and raised.
"It was wonderful," McLaren said of the trip back to the farm where his father grew up.
George McLaren was the first born to Peter and Mary Ann McLaren in 1912. The couple had three other children - Jeanetta, Ian and Mary - however George was the only member of his family to immigrate to Canada.
In March 1930, at just 17, he left Scotland bound for Swift Current, Saskatchewan, as part of the Canadian Government Assisted Passage Scheme, where he began work as a farm hand.
After a few years in the Prairies, George McLaren began working his way west, eventually landing in Delta in the late 1930s. He worked on various farms in Delta and Surrey, including the Spetifore farm in Tsawwassen.
Ron McLaren said his father returned to the family farm in Scotland at the beginning of the Second World War and worked there before enlisting in the
Royal Canadian Air Force. A flight officer, he served as an engineer on Lancaster and Halifax bombers, and completed 32 missions as a member of the Snowy Owl squadron.
He met his wife Doris during the war and the two returned to Canada and married in 1945.
McLaren, who has lived in Ladner since 1977, said his father, who left farming to study engineering, found work in various communities in the province but eventually returned to Tsawwassen in his later years.
George McLaren passed away in 1989.
McLaren said the cousins decided about a year ago to do something to commemorate their parents' generation after Jeanetta's passing last year. She would have celebrated her 100th birthday last month, so the cousins decided that's when they would plant the tree, McLaren said.
He said the farm's owner readily agreed to allow the family to plant the tree with a small plaque on his property, and the tenant farmers have even agreed to look after the tree.
At the ceremony, one of the cousins, Anne, read a poem written by their grandmother, Mary Ann, and McLaren, a member of the Delta Police Pipe Band, donned his full uniform for the ceremony and played The Rowan Tree, a traditional Scottish folk song.
