Le Touquet is a small seaside town in northern France, but 79 years ago, it was the scene to something you could only imagine in a book.
Dorothy Borutti vowed she would embrace the first liberation that came to free her and her hometime of Le Tourquet from German occupiers during World War II. Borutti was in jail as a political prisoner for listening to the BBC radio. On September 5th, 1944, a British captain and Saskatchewan native, Sandy McPherson, was driving through the small town when he saw a lone blonde woman running towards his jeep.
MacPherson and Borutti would return to Saskatchewan, get married, and live the rest of their days in the Land of the Living Skies.
That story is not only a true story of how the pair met but also the subject of the book “See You in Le Tourqrst, A Memoir of War and Destiny’ written by their daughter and former journalist and producer Romie Christie, which details the stories of her parents about the war and life.
Christie, born in Regina, said knowing how special her parent’s story was, she felt she had to tell it.
“It was something that kind of set them apart. When I was growing up, people knew that story; they loved that story of how they met. This love story that happened out of the horror or war, I wanted to tell the full story of that because there was so much more than just the love story.”
“I just felt like I needed to do it, or this story would be gone.”
Christie, who is no stranger to writing, having spent close to two decades working for the CBC as a journalist, collected her parent’s journals, personal essays, and historical documents, as well as her own stories and those of her family members, to tell the story.
With the book published and Christe now on book tour, she reflected on the time she spent writing the book.
“It feels pretty good to tell this story. It feels like something that I was really drawn to do, something that I never really knew that I would do. It just feels like a completed circle. The story is complete now.”
Christie noted that she feels closer to her parents’ having written the book.
“I feel like they’ve been helping me along the way, cheering me along the way to really do this, to tell their story.”
She added that John Diefenbaker, who knew MacPherson’s dad, former Saskatchewan attorney general Murdoch MacPherson, called it the “the best love story ever.”
Christie will be in Regina on November 15th for a book signing and launch.
