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François Adolphe Deniset
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Born at St. Boniface on 4 October 1917, the eldest son of François Deniset (?-?) and Rachel Bernier (c1885-1920), he attended the Jesuit Collège de Saint-Boniface, the Université de Montréal, and the University of Manitoba.
On 5 September 1939, he joined the 13th Winnipeg Battery, Royal Canadian Artillery. He trained as a gunner, was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on 10 June 1940, and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant on 1 September 1940. On 14 December 1940, he departed Halifax for England, where he married Joan Smyth in July 1941; their daughter Jacqueline Deniset was born in May 1942. He was promoted to the rank of Captain on 1 June 1943.
He was recruited into the Special Operations Executive in the Fall of 1943. On 8 February 1944, he parachuted into France as a member of a four-man team tasked to attack road and rail targets in the vicinity of Chartres, Orléans, and Etampes. They were immediately captured by the Germans because their contact had been captured and their wireless transmissions compromised.
He was executed by firing squad in late July or early August 1944. He was officially declared dead on 8 May 1945. He is commemorated on the 1939-1945 Memorial in Brookwood Cemetery at Surrey, England; on the SOE Memorial at Valencay, France; and on the memorial at the Gross-Rosen concentration camp in Poland. In 1972, the Province of Manitoba named Deniset Lake in his honour.
Birth registration [Francois Adolphe Edmond Deniset], Manitoba Vital Statistics.
Death registration [Rachel Deniset], Manitoba Vital Statistics.
This page was prepared by Robert Nash.
Page revised: 24 May 2024
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