Saskatchewan

Mrs. Wilhelmina Marine (Minnie) Baerr of Yorkton, Saskatchewan, was the 1994 National Memorial (Silver) Cross Mother. During the national Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa on November 11, 1994, at age 101, she laid a wreath at the base of the National War Memorial on behalf of all mothers who have lost a child in military service to Canada.

On October 2, 1943, her son, Trooper August Baerr, was killed while on duty with the Calgary Regiment.

Mrs. Baerr was born in 1892 in Westphalen, Germany and immigrated to Canada in 1906 at age 14. She later married John Baerr, an immigrant from Warsaw, Poland and homesteaded just south of Gorlitz, Saskatchewan. Their son, August, worked as a mechanic at the Lakehead and in Winnipeg prior to enlisting in 1942.

The Baerrs retired to Yorkton, Saskatchewan just before the beginning of the Second World War. Mrs. Baerr died in 1996.

Mrs. Patricia Braun of Raymore, Saskatchewan was the 2011 National Memorial (Silver) Cross Mother. During the national Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa on November 11, 2011, she laid a wreath at the base of the National War Memorial on behalf of all mothers who have lost a child in military service to Canada.

On August 22, 2006, her son, Corporal David Braun, a member of the 2^nd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry based out of Shilo, Manitoba, was killed by a suicide bomber while on patrol in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Mrs. Braun, originally of Semans, is a graduate of Margaret McClumb School and the University of Saskatchewan. She and her husband, Blaine, raised four children—David, Diana, Christopher and Michael. In 1994, she was widowed.

Mrs. Braun is employed by the Horizon School Division.