On Oct. 1, 1940, a newspaper photographer in New Westminster, B.C., captured five-year-old Warren “Whitey” Bernard breaking away from his mother to reach for his father, a soldier marching off to the Second World War. The image, known as “Wait for Me, Daddy,” became the most famous Canadian photograph of the war.
The picture was taken as the British Columbia Regiment (Duke of Connaught’s Own Rifles) marched down Eighth Street at Columbia Street in New Westminster, according to Veterans Affairs Canada and the City of New Westminster. The photographer was Claude P. Dettloff of The Province, the Vancouver daily. Some sources, including Veterans Affairs Canada, spell his surname Detloff.
The soldier in the frame was Jack Bernard. Accounts differ on his rank: several histories of the photo describe him as a private at the time, while a Veterans Affairs Canada profile of the family refers to him as Sergeant Jack Bernard. Whitey’s mother, Bernice, is seen reaching after her son as he slips her grasp and runs toward the column of soldiers, his small hand stretched out toward his father’s.
Dettloff had set up to photograph the regiment as it passed, and the moment he caught was unplanned. The image ran in The Province and was quickly picked up far beyond British Columbia. It was published in Life magazine, according to the City of New Westminster, and was used in war-bond drives across the country. Veterans Affairs Canada notes that the photo hung in every British Columbia school during the war, and that Whitey himself became a poster boy for Victory Bonds between the ages of eight and 10.
The photograph’s power came from how ordinary it was. In the autumn of 1940, Canada had been at war for a little over a year, and families in towns across the country were watching husbands, fathers and sons leave in exactly this way. A child’s outstretched arm and a soldier glancing back over his shoulder said something about that experience that official recruiting posters could not.
The British Columbia Regiment went on to serve overseas. According to Veterans Affairs Canada, Jack Bernard spent five years in uniform and fought at Caen and Falaise in France and later in the Netherlands and Germany. He returned home in the winter of 1945. His medical records, Veterans Affairs Canada reports, noted “battle fatigue.” He died in 1981 at age 74. The department’s profile describes a close relationship between father and son after the war, with Jack teaching Whitey fishing, carpentry and careful handling of money.
The photograph never faded from public memory. The City of New Westminster has described it as the second-most requested photograph in the National Archives. In 2011 the city set up a mayor’s task force to commemorate the image, and in 2013 it selected artists Veronica and Edwin Dam de Nogales to create three life-sized bronze figures recreating the scene, according to a city news release.
The sculpture was unveiled in Hyack Square in New Westminster on Oct. 4, 2014, close to where the original photo was taken, Veterans Affairs Canada reports. Canada Post marked the occasion with a commemorative stamp that year, and the Royal Canadian Mint released commemorative coins featuring the image.
More than eight decades later, the picture remains one of the clearest windows into what Canada’s war effort asked of families at home. It shows no battle, no weapons fired and no enemy. It shows a boy who did not want his father to go, and a city that turned out on a fall day in 1940 to watch its soldiers leave.
Sources: Veterans Affairs Canada, “One photograph led to a lifetime of memory” (Warren Bernard profile); City of New Westminster news release, July 23, 2013. Featured photo: “Wait for Me, Daddy” by Claude P. Dettloff, 1940, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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