Wheatley Soldier's Body Coming Home

The body of an area man who died while fighting alongside U.S. backed Kurdish forces in Syria will be repatriated Friday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported John Robert Gallagher's death on November 4. He was a former infantryman with the 2nd Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. Gallagher had referred to himself as a Windsorite, but his Facebook page says he is from Wheatley, and had been living in Calgary before he left for Syria to fight against Islamic State militants last July.

The procession will leave Mackinnon & Bowes Funeral Home in Toronto at noon sharp Friday. It'll travel down the westbound lanes of Hwy. 401, stopping at Onroute service centres in Cambridge and West Lorne. At Communications Rd. in Chatham-Kent, it will head south to Blenheim.

Canadians are invited to line the bridges of Hwy. 401 between Toronto and Communications Rd.

In Blenheim, the procession will turn right onto Talbot Rd., then left on Catherine for a drive by the Royal Canadian Legion. It then turns left on Marlborough St. and then right on Stanley St. to the Blenheim Community Funeral Home.

So far, a release from the Canadian Heroes Foundation does not include an estimated time of arrival in Blenheim, but the Blenheim Community Funeral Home's website says the estimated time of arrival in Blenheim is between 4pm and 4:30pm.

The foundation says there will be a public ceremony in Toronto on a later date.