Jules Xavier
Shilo Stag

It’s a nickname which has stuck for Bdr (Ret’d) Bob McKinnon, who spent 18 years in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) keeping soldiers nourished from his Army kitchen.
“He called me ‘Cookey’,” recalled Bob, referring to former BComd LCol John Cochrane, when he was posted to Garrison Edmonton.
Now instructing future Lieutenant Colonels at the CAF’s school in Toronto, LCol Cochrane first met the amiable military cook in Alberta, where he was with the Lord Strathcona’s Horse (Royal Canadians), which is a regular armoured regiment of the Canadian Army (CA) and is Canada’s only tank regiment.
“Bob is a great guy,” he said, “who I bumped into everywhere.”
Bob is no stranger to CFB Shilo, having grown up here from 1956 to 1973, when his father the late Sgt Donald McKinnon was posted to this prairie Army training Base.
Bob initially followed in his father’s military footsteps by joining the cadet corp at the now defunct Princess Elizabeth High School — last graduating class was in 1988 before the building was used for other functions, including daycare in 2002 — on the Base.
After graduating Grade 12, he joined 26 Field in Brandon, then was off to Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, for his Base Military Qualifications (BMQ) in 1974.
Why choose cook among the trades being offered by the CAF, and not infantry or artillery? It was simple, according to Bob, thanks to his part-time work at Base messes. Plus, being a cook as a purple trade meant he could be posted to an RCAF or RCN location in Canada. Little did he now his trade choice would see him working for the CA.
“When I was younger I worked in the messes, and was taught to cook,” he recalled. “I had always been doing dishes, but one of the guys said to me I should learn to do more in the kitchen, so I was taught to cook.”
After passing his BMQ on the east coast, he was shipped west to Ontario, and spent time at CFB Borden’s cooking school. After honing his culinary skills in the Base classroom, his career manager told him where his first posting would be in Canada in the mid-70s.
“I’m told I would be going to Shilo, and I said ‘are you serious. That’s where I left.’ Then was told we need somebody there, and we’re sending you.”
At the same time as he was completing his initial military training, he father was retiring from his RCEME job on the Base after a 35-year military career.
“Dad never discouraged me to go into the military, telling me it was my decision,” said Bob while enjoying a hot coffee at Tim Hortons following a trip to the Brandon Cemetery.
Earning a living as a military cook did not take Bob to any theatres of war like his father, or his grandfather the late Pte Adam McDougall (1901-1984). Instead, he worked on this Base, CFB Wainwright and Garrison Edmonton.
What was his favourite Army recipe while out on exercises to keep training soldiers nourished?
“It was always chili,” he said with a chuckle. “But cooking at home was different for me, because cooking for five was not the same as cooking for 25 or more soldiers. I had to change from cooking for bulk when I got home and cooked for the family.”
Sgt McKinnon enlisted in the Canadian Army with PPCLI in 1942, during the Second World War, and trained at Woodstock, Ont., Camp Shilo and Saskatoon, SK, before going overseas in June 1944.
Bob still has the newspaper clipping, plus a few photos, from his father’s archives which shows a photograph of then LCpl McKinnon in an Army great coat above the words related to him being “slightly wounded” in action in France on Oct. 24. It was his sister Mrs G. Quaye who received the news of the war wound and shared it with local media.
Back home from the war, Sgt McKinnon remustered and switched from infantry to RCEME, and then saw action in the Korean War. He was there for the Battle of Kapyong, and at some point was captured by the North Koreans and spent the rest of the war as a POW.
“Growing up, dad never talked about his war experiences,” said Bob. “He never did until sometime in the 1990s while at the Legion following Remembrance Day he started to talk about it — usually with a bunch of his war buddies. It was the same with my grandfather, my mom’s dad, he never talked about the war.”
One of six McKinnon children, he was born in Pembroke, Ont., in February 1952. Bob’s early childhood was spent at Garrison Petawawa while his father was away for the Korean War.
He knows little of his father’s time as a POW, but during his time on this Base growing up, then working in the kitchen feeding soldiers, he had an opportunity to meet a lot of his father’s Korean buddies, like the late PPCLI Sgt Peter Ewasiuk, who died on June 24, 2015.
Born on Jan. 21, 1925, Sgt McKinnon died on Oct. 22, 2000. He’s laid to rest alongside his wife Margaret (1926-2017) in the military section of the Brandon Cemetery. Directly behind him a few rows back off to the side near the city’s cenotaph is the grave of 2PPCLI soldier MCpl Timothy Wilson, who died in the Afghan War in 2006.
His father-in-law Pte McDougall is also buried here, but across the road in a newer section. Uncle Bill McKinnon is buried in a Transcona cemetery in Winnipeg.
While he’s retired from the military, that does not mean Bob is spending his winters in Florida or Arizona. He continues to work, now employed by the Commissionaires working in the jail cells for the Brandon Police Service. He also worked security at Westoba Place before joining Manitoba’s Commissionaires.
In May 2023 he will celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary with wife Marion, who he met in Napinka, a tiny community near Melita.
During the eighth annual No Stone Left Alone event, he was impressed by the more than 1,000 school children and soldiers from 1RCHA and 2PPCLI placing poppies on each of the granite grave markers, including his father’s and grandfather’s.
There was a teacher at his father’s and mother’s grave, who was explaining to a student why there were two grave markers at the site, and what the RCEME insignia engraved on the stone meant.
“It’s a wonderful gesture to see these students placing a poppy at the graves,” he said of the two poppies below his father’s grave stone.
He acknowledged not everyone interred in the military section have family or relatives who visit periodically to reflect on that military members’ past life serving their country. He’s thankful he can come out and visit his parents’ and grandfather’s final resting place.
“You have to remember the people from the past [wars] who have served our country, and came home, and are buried here,” he said. “Those who did not come home paid the ultimate sacrifice, and are not buried here.”
On Remembrance Day, Bob will return to the cemetery and reflect on his own military career, but also those of his father, uncle and grandfather. He will remember them — lest we forget.

Bdr (Ret’d) Bob ‘Cookey’ McKinnon kneels at the graveside of his parents Sgt Douglas McKinnon and wife Margaret in the military section of the Brandon Cemetery. His grandfather Pte Adam McDougall is also interred in the same military section, a long football pass away closer to 18th Avenue. Sgt McKinnon not only served in the Second World War, where he was wounded in France, but also the Korean War, where he was a POW. He served 35 years, while his son spent 18 years as a military cook in the CAF. Son Bob has a few photographs and a newspaper clipping he shared with the Stag. Sgt McKinnon’s medals have been donated to the RCA Museum. Photos Jules Xavier/Shilo Stag