Holy Roller is a Sherman tank that was operated by the 1st Hussars Regiment based out of London, Ontario during the Second World War. It landed at Juno Beach with the Regimental Headquarters at 8:20 AM on 6 June 1944. It survived a brutal campaign from Normandy and along the North-Eastern Regions of France to Belgium, then the Netherlands, and finally into Germany. Being an Allied tank crewman in the Northwestern Europe campaign was notoriously dangerous: tanks were often heavily damaged and abandoned by their surviving crews (if any survived). Only one other tank in the world survived the journey from the Normandy landings to victory: Bomb of the 27th Armoured Regiment (Sherbrooke Fusiliers) from Sherbrooke, Quebec.
Holy Roller came back to London in 1946, it remained in storage until being placed in Queen’s Park (London) near the Western Fair in 1949, then it was moved to Victoria Park in June 1956 and has called the park home ever since. In June 2021, Holy Roller was removed to a workshop at Fanshawe College for a restoration project, it was placed back in Victoria Park on 31 May 2022.
