VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Canadian soldiers who went off to fight in the World War I and II were considered heroes, but were they really Canadians, or British subjects?

That question has arisen thanks to a citizenship case involving a Surrey woman.

Jackie Scott, a Surrey senior, discovered a few years ago that she wasn’t Canadian. Her father was a Canadian soldier who met her mother in Britain during the Second World War. Scott was born in Britain before her parents were married.

She’s been told she isn’t Canadian because she was born out of wedlock overseas, to a father considered a British subject, rather than a Canadian citizen.

According to Citizenship and Immigration, Canadians were British subjects, until 1947 when a new citizenship act was adopted.

“You ask a thousand people if our soldiers were Canadian, and they would say of course they were,” says Don Chapman, founder of the group Lost Canadians.

“The soldiers were given a pamphlet as they headed off to war saying ‘You’re fighting as a Canadian.’  Why wouldn’t they think they were citizens?”

Lost Canadians advocates for people like Scott who didn’t inherit Canadian citizenship due to holes in the Canadian Citizenship Act, which were addressed in amendments made in 2008.

“It’s a total insult, because none of those soldiers would never have thought that their children would not be citizens. It’s a real re-write of history, because in fact citizenship existed well before 1947,” he insists.

Scott says she could easily take out Canadian citizenship, but feels she is entitled to it, and is taking the government to court over the matter.