A FORMER Canadian servicewoman has made a personal pilgrimage to Bournemouth, to visit the town where her mum and dad - a veteran of the D-Day landings - met for the first time.

Rosemarie Lafrance spoke to the Daily Echo from the Cumberland Hotel, where her mother, Winifred, was billeted while serving with the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) during the Second World War.

It was during a wartime dance at the Lansdowne Hotel, now the site of O'Neills, Old Christchurch Road, where her mum and dad crossed paths.

They went on to share a life together in Ontario, Canada, and have three daughters.

Rosemarie, who served in the Canadian military for 25-years before becoming a high school religious education and history teacher, said: "My father, Wilfrid, was a gunner in the 4th Light Anti-aircraft Regiment. He landed on Juno Beach on D-Day, and went up through Calais. Somehow he made it back."

Wilfrid was given leave from the fighting to return home to marry Winifred, which he did in Castleford, West Yorkshire, in 1941.

After the wedding Wilfred shipped out again, eventually spending nine months in Holland, where he witnessed the liberation of the Dutch.

Rosemarie, whose mother died in 2004, explained: "My dad passed away last December, but we were unable to hold his funeral until May this year. I decided to come back to England. I guess this is a grieving journey for me.

"I've travelled here before with my mum and dad, when they pointed out the Cumberland Hotel and other landmarks."

Rosemarie, who also travelled to West Yorkshire where her mother grew up, revealed her mum eventually left the UK in 1947 on RMS Aquitania, the very last of the 'War Bride Ships'.

These specially-commissioned vessels gave women who married US and Canadian servicemen during World War II free passage to North America.

Explaining her mum's story, Rosemarie said: "While dad was fighting in Europe, mum converted to Catholicism so she could marry him.

"Dad went back to Canada at the end of the war, but he'd been writing to mum but had not heard from her for months. So he borrowed money of his father to come back to England.

"When he arrived he discovered all the letters he'd been writing, my grandmother had been intercepting and destroying them."

Winifred, who never lost her Yorkshire accent during her decades living in Canada, also suffered from depression throughout her life, Rosemarie said.

"She'd spent time in psychiatric hospitals and in 1964, in Canada, they actually did a lobotomy on her.

"My mum was a real survivor and I consider she lived a pretty normal life after that. I was wondering whether to tell the story of her depression, but it is not a sad story. It is a story of survival."