Over 113 years and three months since Const. John Johnston of the Regina Police Service (RPS) fell and died while on active duty, he is receiving a headstone. In the early morning of June 29, 1913, he was found fallen to the ground while on patrol. He had suffered a deadly aneurysm just a few weeks into his employment with the RPS, and his grave was never marked at Regina Cemetery. Constable Johnston’s story was lost to time in the archives of the RPS until more than 100 years later, his name was stumbled upon by Allan Vance. A retired law enforcement officer and forensic investigator, Vance spends his free time doing what he loves, exploring history. So, when he read through the annual police report from 1913 and found only a few lines describing the death of Johnston, he looked deeper. There was precious little available about Johnston, who Vance had figured out was a recent immigrant from Ireland and crossed the Atlantic by himself at the age of 20 to escape the famines in his home country. Johnston was a man of impressive stature for his time, standing at six foot eight inches and his lineage never followed him to North America to Vance’s knowledge. What Vance did find for family was back in Ireland. “I did find a cousin who is actually living on the farm where constable Johnston was born. In fact, the house that he was born and lived in still stands although it is condemned. It’s an old shack but it’s still there and they sent me a photograph of it,” Vance said. Vance felt a personal connection to Johnston’s journey, as he himself left his home in Holland at the age of 18 to begin a new chapter of his life in Canada. Seeing the ceremony come together and the headstone laid was a triumph for Vance. “It’s pure satisfaction and joy. It’s not a moment of sadness or anything like that, but it’s a moment of joy because finally after 113 years somebody gets recognized instead of just forgotten,” Vance explained. The mission to pay respects wasn’t one Vance made alone. People as far as Edmonton donated to the GoFundMe to pay for the headstone, and the Regina cemetery itself worked to find Johnston’s unmarked resting place. Regina Cemetery Tour Guide Kenton de Jong explained that it’s not as easy as opening a map of the cemetery and looking. “The records are sometimes a little bit messy, time has passed and they got destroyed or lost over time, but between different sources you can kind of get an idea of who it was who they were, how they ended up here and if they are actually here. Because sometimes it’s a headstone with no body or a body with no headstone so it’s always something you gotta double check as well,” de Jong said. Constable Johnston’s body was one of those unlucky souls with no headstone, but no longer, thanks to the community’s generosity through GoFundMe and Frontier Monuments who crafted the headstone. Johnston was honoured by the Regina Police Service and the Masons of which Johnston was a member of back in Ireland. The headstone will now be a part of the tours through Regina Cemetery as Johnston’s legacy is remembered as a vital piece of history in Regina.
