Thanks to the Veterans who took part in creating our books, "Freedom" and  "Freedom 2".

Our mission has always been to educate the children about various wars by distributing our books to over 200 schools in the Durham Region.  We
also want to leave the book in as many libraries as possible to ensure it is available for research. We hope people will read the individual stores from
the Pickering Veterans and spread this knowledge to their families and friends .Freedom 2 has a story from our Veteran Al "Doc" Doherty, who is a
Canadian Veteran of the U.S. Air Force during the era of the Vietnam conflict. There is also a story from Neil Fielden who is a "Gurkha". Our group is
hoping to have more Veterans from various wars join us this year.

It all began in the year 2004 when our Government officially claimed 2005 as the "Year of the Veteran". It was the 60th Anniversary of one of the
greatest wars of all times and the Veterans of WWII finally received a great amount of recognition from the world for their enormous contribution to our
freedom.  

We wrote and released a book called "Freedom" and received wonderful response for this project. It is available for history research in our Durham
Libraries and 1000 copies of the book were sent to schools, doctors' offices, churches, various Not-for-Profit organizations and various Senior
Centres, etc.

We have tried our best to give the exact dates of many events in the stories and the information is from the memories as remembered by the
Veterans of Pickering over 60 years ago. I know for sure I can't remember from 60 years ago and it was not an easy job for them to put their stories
on paper again. We have written this book with as much care as possible for grammatical working and spelling with E&OE.

Due to the group expanding their membership, we invited the Veterans who joined our group since the first book was released and the original
Veterans, to share their stories in a follow up book entitled "Freedom 2". We have received great response to this book and perhaps we will have to
go back to a second print. We thank Doreen McRae, a very dear friend of mine for 27 years, for her time and expertise in designing Freedom 2 as a
volunteer to the Pickering Veterans' Association. Thanks to the Veterans and Kathryn Bunston who worked so hard to get advertising funds which
enabled us to print our book. We also received support from the Veterans at our Pickering Ribfest where we had a table set up to raise the final
support to raise funds. Special thanks to my son, Mark Hetherman, who gave the final push and used his sales talents to raise the funds necessary to
go to print.

We also received the support from the City of Pickering, especially Tanya Ryce and a special thanks to Sunny Jajatri, Manager of Canada's Pride
Printing Company.

Thanks to our Advertisers that donated monies to cover the cost of printing Freedom 2.

Unfortunately, since our first book entitled "Freedom" and our current release Freedom 2  were distributed, there are a few of our Veterans who have
passed away and we once again offer our condolences to their families and miss them dearly.

We offer both Freedom and Freedom 2 for a small donation of $5.00 per book.
Please contact us at    
email: elsiehetherman@rogers.com
phone 905 839 9507
Elsie Hetherman, President of Pickering Veterans' Association.      
PICKERING VETERANS' ASSOCIATION
(The release of our second book "Freedom 2")
Left to right:
Jan De Vrie -1st Canadian Parachute Battalion(story on pqge 15)Elsie Hetherman - President PVA; Myrna Picotte - President Legion
606;Stephen Little - Veterans Affairs;Douglas Dickerson - Councillor Ward 2 Pickering;Kenny Allen - Royal Air Force , Flight Sergeant
Air Gunner City of Pickering; Wilf Delroy 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion;  City of Pickering -;Mayor David Ryan;
Dignitaries and Veterans pictured on Release Date of "Freedom 2" October 9th, 2009
Location:.Legion 606 - 1555 Bayly Street , Pickering Ontario
Fulfilling a Dream

Author: Elsie Hetherman(pictured on the right)