Edward "Teddy" Blenkinsop Scholarship
Edward Weyman "Teddy" Blenkinsop was born in 1920 in Victoria, BC and attended Oak Bay School before articulating as a chartered accountant with a Vancouver firm. When war broke out, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force at Victoria in June, 1940 and trained as a pilot-navigator. He was posted to No. 425 Squadron in 1943 and flew out of North Africa. Upon completion of his first tour he volunteered for a second tour with No. 405 Squadron of the elite Pathfinder Force.
Blenkinsop was shot down and survived although the remainder of his crew members did not. He was picked up by the Belgian Underground and obtained papers that enabled him to pass as a Belgian national. However, while in Meensel-Kiesegem, the German Gestapo captured 91 members of the local Resistance including Blenkinsop. He was held at St. Gilles Prison in Brussels and while detained transmitted his identity by tapping in Morse code over steam pipes.
Blenkinsop was sent to work in a factory in Hamburg and succumbed at age 24 on January 23, 1945 in the infamous Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp due to forced labour, starvation, and various other inhumane deprivations. His ashes were scattered as fertilizer, his only remembrance a plaque at the Runnymede Memorial UK.
Although Teddy is relatively unknown in Canada today, he remains a folk hero in Belgium and the Netherlands. Little was known of his exploits until Peter Celis, a Belgian, researched the story and published his book One Who Almost Made It Back. It can be found in the UVic library.