Posts with the Second World War tag

Barris Beat

The turns of war

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Roger Parliament swears oath of allegiance at RCAF recruiting office, in front of his father, Garnott Parliament

When he turned 18, in 1941, Roger Parliament travelled to a recruiting office in downtown Toronto to join up for wartime service. He’d prepared all his enlistment papers and anticipated vision and hearing tests.

Then, LAC Parliament officially signed up.

But perhaps the most critical part of his decision to enlist in the armed services occurred when he came before the second-in-command at the recruiting office on Bay Street.

“I’ve decided to join the Air Force,” he told the pilot officer he faced.

Across the table from him was Pilot Officer Garnott Parliament, Roger’s father. (more…)

Barris Beat

Arnold Hodgkins’ art comes home

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Arnold Hodgkins’ portrait of war trauma. “Victim ’43”

Some things are just meant to happen. About five years ago, a woman in Port Perry made a decision about the artwork that had accumulated around her home for half a century. A large private collection of sketches, water colours and other paintings created by Carol Hodgkins-Smith’s father, Arnold Hodgkins, suddenly went public. The calendar was approaching Nov. 11, and Carol decided her father’s war art deserved a viewing right then and there in her home.

“I think it’s finally time to share my dad’s artwork with the rest of the world,” she told me. She even decided that she would allow some of the artwork to be sold as individual items. (more…)

Barris Beat

Putting a face on The Rock

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Geraldine Hibbs illustrates how deep into the Bell Island iron ore mine our tour will go.

We met a hundred feet underground. The walls around us consisted of a seam of iron ore. It was about six degrees Celsius in there, but she said the temperature never changed year-round. At one point, when she turned out the lights and lit a single candle, she explained that was all the light miners had during their digging shifts – 10 hours a day, six days a week – year after year.

Then, she made the whole place human. She said her dad had worked there in the 1950s, lost the lower part of his leg in a mining accident, but was able to joke about it.

“He wagered strangers, he could put a foot down in one spot and his other 25 feet away,” she said. “When they bet he couldn’t, he took off his prosthetic foot and tossed it 25 feet away.” (more…)

Barris Beat

What-ifs of Canadian warriors

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Veteran Bill Novick offering reflections on his role in D-Day operations 75 years ago.

He sat down to rest. He sighed a long, audible sigh. And he smiled with a touch of satisfaction. Around Bill Novick, sat family and some of his fellow travellers gathered, this spring day, at a museum in Normandy, France. They all sensed that Bill had a story to tell: the time, just before D-Day, when his Halifax bomber was coned.

“Enemy gunners at Cologne (Germany) put up a box barrage (concentrated anti-aircraft fire) 3,000 feet high, two miles wide by 10 miles long,” he said. “Searchlights moved all over the sky … and we were coned by the lights. That required evasive action called a corkscrew.” That meant Pilot Officer Novick put the 18-tonne bomber into a violent dive one way, then another, at speeds up to 250 miles per hour to escape the lights and the anti-aircraft fire.

“It was four minutes of sheer terror,” he concluded. “If we were scared, it never entered my mind that I wasn’t going to make it.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Fred Barnard’s gift to town and country

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Fred Barnard as member of the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada in WWII.

I know this sounds like a cliché, but I remember the day as if it were yesterday. It was 16 years ago, in the summer of 2003. I was standing in line at a bank in town waiting to pay my credit card bill. Ahead of me were an older man and, at the head of the line a friend of mine. My friend asked what I was doing these days.

“I’m writing a book about Canadians on D-Day,” I said.

“Big anniversary coming up,” my friend commented.

“Yes,” I said.

Then it was my friend’s turn for service at the teller’s wicket and he turned to the counter to do his banking. That left only the older man and me in the queue. That’s when the older fellow slowly turned to me and spoke.

“I was there,” he said quietly.

“A veteran, are you?”

“I was there,” he repeated and then continued, “on D-Day.” (more…)

Barris Beat

A tour to Remember

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Caitlin Wager and her father Rob shared a moment on Dieppe Beach during their recent Remembrance Tour.

A few days ago, Grade 11 student Caitlin Wager and several of her Uxbridge Secondary School classmates stopped on a bridge in the Netherlands. The overpass was situated amid newly blooming tulips at a popular springtime tourist spot, called Keukenhof. Not surprisingly, the teenagers decided to take some selfies. Suddenly, a Dutch woman approached the Uxbridge girls, and Caitlin thought the woman was going to ask her take a photo for her.

“No,” the Dutch woman said. “I want to take a picture of you.”

“Pardon?” Caitlin asked, not quite understanding.

“All of you,” the woman repeated. “I want a picture of all of you.”

And when the girls asked why, she said, “Because you’re Canadians.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Deny. Delay. And die.

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Ted Arnold instructed aircrew cadets for combat roles overseas in WWII.

The last time I spent time with Ted Arnold was in 1991. He had contacted me about his Second World War story. So, I travelled to Port Hope and interviewed him. We communicated again later in the year when he was holidaying in Florida. And while I thought of him often after that, I never actually saw him again. His son Rick contacted me some years later.

“We were wondering if you could help us?” he asked.

I said I would try and then Rick explained that his father had slipped through the cracks at Veterans Affairs Canada. Partly because he was born in Argentina, but mostly because he fell into an odd category as a veteran, the system had denied him veteran status, and therefore funds to cover the expenses at an assisted-living facility in Ontario.

“As you know,” Rick Arnold went on, “he’s not entitled to a veteran’s pension.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Harry Watts and the heart of service

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Harry Watts, more a humanitarian than a warrior.

I didn’t expect to see him that day. I had a million other things on my mind. But then, in the middle of our Sam Sharpe statue unveiling, Harry Watts came up to say hello. I thought, why had Harry, a veteran of the Second World War – a guy who lived in Kitchener – why had he come to Uxbridge for the unveiling of a statue to a First World War soldier?

“I had to come,” he said. “I had to show my support for a man who gave so much to his troops and then paid so much with his shell shock.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Ted Zuber’s lesson of war

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Ted Zuber. Courtesy Zuber family.

It was getting late. I’d been interviewing him for several hours. He’d given me such illuminating stories for my research of the Korean War. But this veteran had one last lesson for me. And I stumbled on it unsuspectingly. I asked the former sniper with the Royal Canadian Regiment what sort of emotions he’d felt during his time overseas.

“No such thing,” he told me. “Emotion was a luxury we had learned to give up in the army.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Greatest loss from the Great War

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Globe and Mail (Nov. 8, 2018) front page features artist Tyler Briley and his sculpted relief of Sam Sharpe installed on Parliament Hill.

In one of the first notations he jotted into his combat journal, First World War soldier Sam Sharpe recorded the actions of his rookie Canadian battalion. The 116thOntario Country Regiment was experiencing its baptism of fire in France. It was April 9, 1917, the first day of the battle of Vimy Ridge. His men were not fighting German soldiers, but laying wire in communication trenches on the Allied side of the Western Front. L/Col. Sharpe noted that his men endured a hail of artillery shells as they worked. Members of the 116th were wounded or killed, including one of his closest friends in the battalion.

“It is awfully sad,” Sharpe wrote. “Lt. John Doble was killed instantly by a shell, while leading a wiring platoon. Ontario County is paying its toll in this great struggle.”

This Sunday – for the 100thtime – at the 11thhour of the 11thday of the 11thmonth – we will gather at the cenotaph at Brock and Toronto streets in Uxbridge. (more…)