Posts with the Second World War tag

Barris Beat

The balloon menace

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Anita Anand, minister of national defence, addresses 204th Toronto Garrison Officers’ Ball on Feb. 11, 2023.

The evening was all about military pomp and circumstance. Hundreds of Canadian Armed Services personnel had gathered last Saturday night at the Beanfield Centre on the CNE grounds for Toronto’s premier social event in the military community. I actually landed a ticket and was seated at a table of Navy regulars and reservists. The 204th edition of the Garrison Officers’ Ball was well underway, when the Minister of National Defence arrived in time to address guests at the ball.

“I have important news to share with you,” Anita Anand said. “Today at 3:41 p.m. aircraft assigned to NORAD successfully took down (a) high-altitude airborne object. The object, flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet, had unlawfully entered Canadian air space and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight.” (more…)

Barris Beat

The art and chemistry of survival

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Ron Moyes (left end) crewed up with Hugh Ferguson, Don Walkey, Stu Farmer, Alvin Kuhl and Jake Redinger in 1944. They survived 29 combat operations in Bomber Command.

It happened kind of like choosing a partner at a high school dance, where the girls all lined up on one side of the dance floor and the boys on the other.

Only in this case, during the Second World War, the Commonwealth airmen gathered in a hangar in England – pilots in one group, navigators in another, gunners in another, etc. As RCAF gunner Ron Moyes told me the other night, bomber pilot Don Walkey first picked a navigator, Hugh Ferguson.

“Then, Fergy picked the rest of us,” said Moyes, just shy of his 97th birthday (Feb. 11). (more…)

Barris Beat

Truly unsung Canadian heroism

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On his own initiative, RCAF pilot Norville Everett Small, quietly made Air Force anti-submarine attacks more effective.

His first job in the RCAF in the Second World War was training young military aircrew for combat. U-boats, the submarines of the German Kriegsmarine (war navy), had descended like wolf packs on merchant shipping off the coast of Nova Scotia since 1940 – sinking upwards of 300,000 tons of freight destined for Britain each month.

So, Canadian bomber pilot Norville Everett (Molly) Small had to teach his green bomber crews not only how to handle their aircraft, but also how to surprise and try to sink U-boats on the Atlantic. He and his Canso (flying boat) crew got their first opportunity on April 28, 1942. They attempted to drop bombs on an unsuspecting U-boat. The bombs exploded, but wide of the target.

“The captain of the aircraft,” Molly Small later reported drily of his attack, “feels though the possibility of a clean kill is not very strong, he is certain that he made their back teeth rattle. He’ll do better next time.” (more…)

Barris Beat

The forgotten of the forgotten

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HMCS Shawinigan, corvette torpedoed off the East Coast in 1942.

I almost missed her. I’d finished a presentation to the Tillsonburg military historical club. In fact, I thought I’d answered all of the questions from the audience. Then, I noticed a woman in the back row with her hand raised. Even when she stood, I could only see her head and shoulders above the seated audience. Diminutive though she was, however, her voice was strong.

“My father was in the Battle of the Atlantic,” she announced. “He went down with HMCS Shawinigan. All hands were lost.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Gratitude’s good for your health

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Thanksgiving with a new branch of the family included.

It’s coming up to five months since the derecho winds struck our community on May 21. In those first few weeks after the storm, I wrote extensively about the experience – the fearful moments prior to, the anxious moments during, the mixed emotions afterward. But as damaging as those times proved to be, I think we all shared the sentiment. It could have been worse.

“At least we don’t have bombs falling on our heads,” I remember thinking (a reference to the plight of Ukrainian civilians facing Russian bombardment in their homes and streets).

My family and I spent part of Thanksgiving weekend gathering, catching up, feasting, laughing and shedding an emotional tear or two. (more…)

Barris Beat

A few degrees of separation

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John Dougall wrote his mom about WWII from a merchant ship. His letters coincidentally made their way to me.

I wasn’t expecting to be surprised. This particular public-speaking event seemed straight forward. I’d arrived early and worked with the tech guy to get my presentation ready. I’d met with the bookseller to pre-inscribe some books. Then, I sat watching people file in. Then, a face registered, and her name tag – Jane Hutchison. She spotted me and came right over.

“Hi, Ted,” she said with a smile. “I’m John Dougall’s niece.”

“What are you doing here?” And I gave her a hug.

She said she was a longtime member of Canadian Club of Halton and heard that I’d been invited to speak about those who’d served at sea in the Battle of the Atlantic (the subject of my latest book). She said she didn’t want to miss this event, since the subject was near to her heart. (more…)

Barris Beat

Tony Mellaci – first responder for two generations

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Sergeant medic Tony Mellaci overseas 1945.

He saved my father. Then, he saved me. In fact, he saved both of us multiple times. The first instance occurred 80 years ago this December. Just before Christmas of 1942, both Tony Mellaci and my father, Alex Barris, arrived at Camp Phillips – a U.S. Army training facility in Kansas. The army had posted them there to train as medics in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. Then, something happened Christmas Eve.

“They told me to go to the headquarters barracks and pick up a soldier who was sick, and deliver him to the hospital. So, I and another ambulance driver picked up your father (although I didn’t know him at the time) and we took him to the hospital,” Mellaci told me. “But we never saw the sick soldier. We stayed in the cab while other medics loaded him into the ambulance.” (more…)

Barris Beat

What half the world is missing

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Physicist Chien-Shiung Wu (right) at Berkley in WWII.

One morning last week, our daughter called and asked if I would drive our granddaughter to high school. I eagerly took on the taxi duty, if only to help share the load of ferrying kids to school, but mostly for the chance to catch up with our granddaughter. During the trip to school that morning, I learned that she was enjoying her drama, phys ed and French classes. But our granddaughter’s favourite subject was science.

“I did an essay on Chien-Shiung Wu,” she said, “and got 100 per cent.”

“I’ve never heard of her,” I admitted.

“She was known as the ‘first lady of physics,’” she said proudly. (more…)

Barris Beat

Identity lost and found

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Uxbridge Oilies Oldtimers Hockey Club.

Last Sunday, about 1 o’clock in the afternoon, I disappeared. I wasn’t hiding. I wasn’t trying to escape. In fact, I’d just returned home from a getaway-weekend hockey tournament in Bancroft – an annual event my oldtimers teammates and I enjoy.

As I arrived home, however, I felt my pocket, noticed my wallet was missing. I began retracing my steps. One of my hockey buddies and I had stopped for coffee. I’d paid the cashier, picked up the coffee cups and pastry and promptly forgot my wallet at the cash.

“Did anybody turn in a wallet left on the counter?” I asked an employee over the phone.

“Not that I know of,” she said.

I asked her to check with a supervisor or manager. But the answer was the same. Nothing in the lost-and-found. Nothing on the counter, the floor, anywhere. The wallet I’d absentmindedly left behind was gone. (more…)

Barris Beat

Not yet perished

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Canadian immigration officials called them “men in sheepskin coats,” but Ukrainian immigrants brought with them something greater than dreams.

The other day I spoke to a west-Toronto business group, but I learned as much as I informed that morning. Not surprisingly, during my talk about Canadians’ service in wartime, the subject of the Russian invasion of Ukraine came up. I remarked how very familiar Putin’s actions were to Hitler’s in the 1930s. Anyway, after my talk, a man from the audience approached me. He introduced himself. “Bo Sirota,” he said.

“Sounds Ukrainian,” I responded. And when he asked how I knew, I said I’d lived and worked in Alberta and Saskatchewan for a number of years and I knew a Ukrainian Canadian named Bohan. “Do you have family caught in the invasion?” I asked.

He nodded and described some of his relatives living in the village of Drohobych, on the outskirts of Lviv, Ukraine. (more…)