This trophy is awarded annually to 34 Combat Engineer Regiment’s (CER) top member and is named in honour of a former member of the unit, WO2/Sgt. Major Walter “Rocky” Leja, GM, CD, who received the George Medal in January 1964 for conspicuous courage and outstanding devotion to duty in the dismantling of improvised bombs during the Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ) crisis in Montréal.
Walter “Rocky” Leja was born in Poland in 1921 but immigrated to Canada. He joined the Canadian Army and became a sapper, rising to the rank of WO2 or Sergeant-Major. On the night of 16-17 May 1963, fifteen bombs were placed in mailboxes throughout Westmount, as part of the increasing Front de Liberation (FLQ) crisis in Montréal. Five mailboxes exploded in the hours between midnight and dawn. With five explosions already, and no idea how many bombs are planted around the city, the police called in the Army. Five more bombs were found, and the police set out to disarm them as fast as possible. One of Montréal’s few explosive experts was WO2 Walter “Rocky” Leja of 3 Field Engineer Regiment, Royal Canadian Engineers. Sergeant-Major Leja’s first mailbox bomb is near a school in the area of Landsdowne and Westmount avenues. The second bomb is on a crowded downtown street, so Sergeant-Major Leja decides to make it safe on the spot. He calmly reaches into the mailbox, lifts out the bomb, and dismantles it on the sidewalk. The third bomb looks just like the second one, and Sergeant-Major Leja decides to treat it the same way. As soon as his hand touches the package, the bomb explodes, inflicting injuries from which he never recovered. For conspicuous courage and outstanding devotion to duty, Sergeant-Major Leja received the George Medal in January 1964. He died in 1992 at the Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue Veterans’ Hospital.
