Efforts are underway in Wolfville, N.S., to erect a statue honouring a brave Canadian woman who played a key role in the Second World War -- even though she never wore a uniform.
Mona Parsons, who was born in Middleton, N.S., in 1901 and grew up in Wolfville, was captured and imprisoned by the Nazis in Holland for assisting Allied airmen.
Before the war, she was pursuing an acting career in New York when she met Dutch millionaire Willem Leonhardt. They married in 1937 and moved to Holland.
On their second wedding anniversary, the Nazis invaded the country. Parsons and her husband became part of the resistance movement and helped hide Allied pilots who were downed in the fighting.
When someone gave them away, Parsons’ husband went into hiding, but she refused to do the same and was arrested.
“This is a woman who never wore a uniform, never carried a gun and was willing to put her life on the line and very nearly lost it for the things she believed in, like justice, like freedom,” author Andria Hill-Lehr, who wrote Parsons’ biography, told CTV Atlantic.
Parsons was sent to the women’s prison in Vechta, Germany, where she spent four years. When the prison was bombed in 1945, Parsons and a young Dutch woman seized the opportunity to escape and made their way across Germany by pretending to be German. Parsons faked a speech impediment so that her accent wouldn’t give her away.
Parsons eventually made her way to a Canadian unit at the Dutch-German border, the Nova Scotia Highlanders.
After her husband died, Parsons moved back to Nova Scotia and married Maj.-Gen. Harry Foster. She died in Wolfville in 1976. Her headstone refers to her as Foster’s wife, but makes no mention of her incredible Second World War story.
And even though her biography has been written and she was the subject of a Historica Canada Heritage Minute, some feel like Parsons didn’t get enough recognition for her bravery.
Now, a group called the Women of Wolfville wants to have a statue of Parsons erected in town.
“It’s going to happen, it’s just how soon it becomes a reality,” said group member Wendy Elliott.
The group has received approval from the town, as well $8,000 from the provincial government, but still need to raise about $15,000 to finish the project.
Nistal Prem de Boer, an artist who was born in Amsterdam shortly after the war, is already working on the statue.
He said he is giving the statue “an exuberant pose” to reflect the joy felt by Parsons and others after Holland was liberated.
Elliott said she would like to see the statue unveiled on May 5, 2016, “which is the anniversary of VE day and when she was crossing that border into Holland again.”
With a report from CTV Atlantic’s Jacqueline Foster
