“It’s Christmas Eve” brought together Alex, the composer, and Quenby and Whitney, the singers and grandchildren, in 2001.
A number of Christmases ago, my father Alex called me. He was worried about something. I asked him what was wrong. He said he was facing a dilemma. He had just written a Christmas song and wanted one of our two daughters to record it. Since both were good singers, he didn’t know which to choose.
“Dad, I don’t see a problem,” I said. “They both sing. Why not ask them to record it together? They can sing it in harmony.”
Well, it was one of those times in my life when instinct proved to be bang on. My father approached both our daughters – Quenby, the teacher, and Whitney, the actor/singer – and they agreed to work on it together. (more…)
Noreen and Art Hawtin pose with the sign identifying their ranch est. 1936
One of rancher Art Hawtin’s closest friends, another rancher in Beaverton, Ont., told me that Art had two personalities. One personality Art exhibited around family and friends, when he was soft-spoken and easy-going. Then, whenever he herded his cattle, he exhibited the firmness and purpose required. When he moved cattle into pens or onto trucks, his friend said, Art seemed to be able to speak to the animals with his eyes and his body posture.
“It was as if the cattle figured that it was their job to get into the chutes or onto the truck,” Bob Robertson told me this week. “Art made them do whatever he wanted.” (more…)
The unsinkable Rodine Egan at her 90th birthday party in 2013.
It happened over the weekend. She called me over to her house. As a neighbour of some 25 years, of course, I said I’d help. When I entered her kitchen, I realized she was upset. More than that she was worried. She handed me a letter she’d received from a utility and asked me to explain to her what it meant. I looked at the content of the letter as she spoke to me. She seemed to be more afraid than inquisitive.
“What does this mean?” she repeated.
As many of you know, I live next door to a most extraordinary person. At 91, Rodine Egan is not as spry as she once was, but at no time have I ever sensed that anything could frighten her.
Canadian sailor Jim Hunt served in the Norwegian Merchant Navy in WWII
Regulations clearly stipulated against it. An exposed light in the middle of the darkness, especially on the open sea when the country was at war made the vessel emitting the light extremely vulnerable. German U-boats could spot it in a second, and attack in the next. And the risk was made extremely clear to merchant navy man Jim Hunt during one North Atlantic crossing when his tanker convoy was under an escort by U.S. navy ships.
“Someone had left a porthole open with a light on at dusk on board our tanker,” Hunt said, remembering his time in the Second World War as a teenaged sailor at sea aboard a Norwegian merchant navy ship. “So, an American destroyer came alongside our ship and signaled for us to turn the light out … or they would sink us.” (more…)
My writing staff and I had just completed a production meeting. I had just given our writers – the senior students of our online newspaper at Centennial College – their Remembrance Day assignments. With the recent loss of two reserve soldiers here in Canada, we were all sharply focused on Nov. 11 coming next week. So, I’d gone around the table and assigned stories to our student reporters. One would write about a woman in the Royal Canadian Navy in the Second World War. Another had an interview with an Afghanistan vet. A third would feature young military cadets.
And one reporter, a young man named Jasun, needed a phone number for a D-Day vet I asked him to interview.
“May I give you a bit of background?” I asked him.
He started writing notes on a single sheet of paper with his other hand as the writing surface.
I invited Jasun into my office. He sat at my desk. I stood across from him and gave him as much detail as I could about the 90-year-old veteran he would be interviewing later that day or the next. (more…)
Walter Allward’s marble sculpture of Mother Canada mourning her dead at Vimy Ridge memorial site in France.
Early in the celebration of Bill Cole’s life, last Sunday afternoon at Wooden Sticks, his son Rob talked about the periodic disconnect that had existed between himself and his late father. Rob said he thought it was much the same as the disconnect between Bill and his father, First World War veteran Thomas Clark Cole. But Rob admitted a reality that many sons and daughters do.
“I was astonished,” Rob Cole said. “The older I got, the wiser Dad seemed to become.” (more…)
The Nanji twins are driven to contribute to their community.
The two young women stood together at the front of the hall, the former pharmacy on the main floor of the Toronto Street medical building. They couldn’t have been more alike. They wore the same T-shirts decorated in a blue and yellow logo. They wore their hair the same – shoulder-length – and they even looked, well, identical. And when they spoke – like a married couple – they finished each other’s sentences.
“I still remember a year ago, thinking this might not work,” one said.
“Yeah, we’ve grown so much,” the other said. “There were only 15 people attending this time last year…”
“This year, there are over 30,” the first added. (more…)
At the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, George Weber and I posed in front of his favourite aircraft – the Spitfire – where he spent mot of his WWII career.
He wasn’t wearing his medals when I met George Weber, this week. Had he worn the ribbons and gongs – for his service in the U.K., the Mediterranean and Burma in the Second World War – they’d have no doubt looked pretty impressive. But his blazer with its air force pilot’s brevet and fighter squadron crest offered ample evidence of his wartime service.
Still, one aspect of Weber’s life in the war was not so obvious. He came from a Mennonite home near Kitchener and the Webers, he told me, did not believe in the use of guns. But as it turned out he was able to reconcile his religious beliefs and his loyalty to Canada.
“I didn’t shoot people during the war,” he said. “I ended up shooting pictures.”
In 1941, very much against his father’s wishes, a 22-year-old George Weber went to a recruiting office in western Ontario and enlisted in the army. It became evident very quickly that his family’s “conscientious objector” philosophy (a general condemnation of war for the bloodshed involved) conflicted with his basic army training. A cousin assisted his transfer to air force. And for a while, all George had to worry about were his flight controls, navigation skills, takeoffs and landings.
Then, his Elementary Flying Training School was visited by none other than former WWI fighter pilot Billy Bishop, who’d arrived to ensure the young air cadets were up to snuff. Bishop (the instruction inspector) and Weber (the guinea pig student) took off in a two-seater Fleet Finch.
“Bishop took me up to a thousand feet and told me to do a slow roll,” Weber said. “Well, I’d never done any aerobatics … but I ended up doing some unexpected low flying. … and I guess that’s why I ended up doing photo reconnaissance [in an unarmed Spitfire].”
With your understanding of my preoccupation of such things (and since I’ve just come back from D-Day observances overseas) I’ve often wondered how some men and women served in the armed forces, when their religious convictions in life did not align with the demands of their service. In particular, religious groups such as Quakers, Mennonites and Amish (among others) have historically refused to participate in armed service. Generally, such religions have believed they should remain neutral in worldly conflicts, that they had greater respect for humanity as a whole, or that no government had the right to command its citizens to go to war.
“Neither shall [we] learn war anymore,” they might quote from the Bible.
I never asked my father about such things (and I should have), but I sense his service as a medic in the Second World War might well have resulted from a form of conscientious objection. He’d grown up in a non-violent family environment. I know there was never a gun in his mother’s house (as there was never one in the house where my sister and I grew up). And while he went to Greek Orthodox Church most Sundays, my father’s view of war I don’t think was influenced by his religion. Years later, when I came across his attestation (enlistment) papers, I noticed in the “occupation” box he had written “sewing machine operator.”
It never occurred to me until someone made the connection between his occasional piecemeal work sewing furs (like his mother and future mother-in-law) and his wartime role of patching people up, that maybe his needlework had landed him in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, not his anti-war sentiment. Whatever the reason, I sensed my father survived the war very much the way George Weber did, by coping with its realities and putting up with its inconsistencies until clearly the bad guys were put out of action.
As I suggested, RCAF pilot George Weber adhered to his family’s abhorrence of violence and the principles of warfare pretty loyally. On almost every operation – more than 70 photo reconnaissance flights during the war – Warrant Officer Weber never pressed the button on his Spitfire control column with any other intention than to capture images of enemy positions.
He did however admit, in our interview this week, that he carried a 45-callibre pistol on his hip, just in case. And when pressed he said he’d used it once. On one of his flights over Japanese military positions in Burma, he attracted the attention of a Japanese Zero pilot. Weber said he managed to evade the enemy fire. But in an act of frustration – to ward off the enemy pilot – Weber said he was suddenly alongside the Japanese fighter pilot.
“I opened my cockpit cover enough to fire a couple of shots at the guy with my 45 to scare him off,” Weber said. “But my dad never heard about it.”
I guess a few warning shots across the bow of an enemy fighter didn’t violate either his promise to his father or the tenets of his Mennonite faith.
Rick Askew, from Oshawa, joined me in Normandy to pay tribute to wartime service.
When he was a kid at school, he dreaded show-and-tell days more than just about anything. Especially around Remembrance Day. When it came time to tell the class what his dad did in the war, sometimes he’d invent a fighter pilot dad. Other times, a bomber pilot dad. But just last week when he reconsidered his father’s wartime career, Rick Askew’s attitude about his dad had changed.
“I had him winning the war all by himself,” he told me. “In truth, he never fired a gun once in the war.”
Last week, Rick Askew, a semi-retired cosmetics salesman from Oshawa, travelled with me (and a larger Merit Travel group) in northwestern France. We toured key locations in Normandy where Allied armies had gained a critical toehold against the Nazi occupation of Europe beginning on June 6, 1944. I took him and the tour group to Juno Beach, Pegasus Bridge, Omaha Beach, Pointe du Hoc, where the men of our fathers’ generation had turned the tide of the Second World War. But unlike the history books, I explained to Askew and my other travel guests that it wasn’t the generals and politicians who’d achieved these objectives. It was the average citizen soldiers, such as his father and mine.
To emphasize the point, I offered a story I’d been told by friend Braunda Bodger. A dozen years ago, she’d informed me that her father, a stationery worker in Regina before the war, had come ashore in France in the clerical section of Gen. Bernard Montgomery’s 21st Army Group. I was curious about the role a clerk might have played during the Allied advance. And when I spoke to the man himself – Wally Filbrandt – my view of the entire Allied invasion of Normandy turned on a dime.
“There were reinforcement companies, battalions and brigades all ready to jump into action,” Filbrandt told me. “We would simply receive casualty reports and then assign reinforcements where they were needed.”
In other words, he kept the invasion army functioning in fact the way it was supposed to on paper. It was a remarkable turnabout for me as a documentarian of the war. In those minutes spent with Filbrandt, I’d come to realize that sometimes the least visible acts of service were among the most influential contributors to winning the war. Filbrandt’s dispatching the right replacement ultimately meant the difference between victory and defeat.
Like Filbrandt, Bill Askew (Rick’s father) had served King and country not with a gun, but with a behind-the-lines skill. Askew Sr. had played brass instruments in the RCAF band stationed at Goose Bay, Labrador (then technically “overseas” because Newfoundland and Labrador didn’t join Canada until 1949). He and his 30 fellow bandsmen had played for parades, dances and ceremonies; they were the sound foundation to every official event on base.
“I had him winning the war,” Rick Askew said. “It took me 50 years to figure out he was just as much a veteran as anybody.”
Bill Opitz (left), D-Day vet from Canadian minesweeper Bayfield, receives Rick Askew’s commemorative flag at Juno Beach, on June 6, 2014.
Actually, Rick Askew had joined my Normandy trip for a number of reasons. Initially, a few months ago, he’d decided to get his buddies at a club in Oshawa to autograph of Canadian Maple Leaf flag. It would be up to Rick to find the right veteran attending D-Day ceremonies in France to receive the autographed flag as a symbol of gratitude and remembrance. As we awaited the ceremony last week at Juno Beach, Askew suddenly ran up to me.
“I found him,” he told me excitedly.
“Who?” I asked, not remembering his plan.
“The vet to receive our autographed flag.”
He led me through the maze of vets awaiting the 70th anniversary ceremony in front of the Juno Beach Centre and introduced me to Bill Opitz, who’d served as a stoker aboard the Royal Canadian Navy minesweeper HMCS Bayfield on D-Day. Ultimately, that proved only half of Rick Askew’s quest in France. During most mornings, when he smoked a cigarette out on the balcony of our hotel in Normandy, he began to realize the diversity of service that Canadians had delivered that spring back in 1944, had actually included his father.
With the story of Filbrandt in his thoughts and with his autographed flag delivered to an ordinary navy stoker, Rick Askew perhaps sensed his father’s role as a bandsman had been more important than a son had given his father credit. As a bandsman, the elder Askew had given tempo to military parades, melody to receptions and often the correct somber atmosphere to station memorials. He’d learned that service in such a desperate time had come in all shapes, sizes, and contributions.
“This trip has changed my life,” Rick Askew told me on the last day of our tour. “I’m really proud of what my father did now.”
In many more ways than one, Juno is always close by. Fred Barnard’s been counting down the days, reminding his daughter, Donna, that the anniversary is coming up. At 93, he’s not as agile as the day he first became acquainted with Juno Beach. That day – June 6, 1944 – he waded ashore in Normandy as part of the greatest amphibious landing in military history. He helped the liberation of Europe gain a toehold in France as part of the D-Day landings.
“He remembers it all,” she said. “Whenever it’s close to the anniversary, it’s always on his mind.”
Well, D-Day is almost as often on my mind as it is on Fred’s, but especially with the 70th anniversary tomorrow. Some of you may remember how Fred Barnard and I came to know each other. Eleven years ago, I was standing in line at the CIBC 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.
“Writing a book about Canadians on D-Day,” I said.
“Big anniversary next year,” my friend said.
“Yes. The 60th.”
Fred Barnard as a young QOR soldier.
Then it was my friend’s turn for service at the teller’s wicket. That left only the older fellow and me. As we moved up the queue, he turned to me.
“I was there,” he said quietly.
“A veteran, are you?”
“I was there,” he repeated and then continued, “on D-Day.”
What followed was an exchange of phone numbers, an invitation to visit and an interview that changed me, and it changed the book I was writing. Fred Barnard related to me his D-Day experience of coming ashore in Normandy that June day in 1944 with his younger brother Donald in the same landing craft.
Donald Barnard, Fred’s younger brother, also in the QOR.
But Fred’s younger brother never made it off the beach; a single bullet through the chest felled Donald before he reached dry land. Until that day in 2003, Fred Barnard rarely if ever talked about it. I felt honoured to hear the Barnard brothers’ story.
Fred and I have carried on a friendly acquaintance ever since. Phone calls, visits to the house and the occasional chance meeting downtown have allowed me to learn more about my coincidental friend. As often as we’ve chatted, however, Fred remains a quiet and modest man. His Second World War service in France after D-Day proved to be equally remarkable. His Queen’s Own unit continued to spearhead the liberation of France and Fred was wounded by shrapnel in mid-August 1944.
All of that might seem just another veteran’s tale from a war so long ago, fading and nearly forgotten. However, several years ago, back in 2007, I accompanied Fred Barnard to a ceremony at the Moss Park Armoury in Toronto. At that event he received the French Legion of Honour.
“I was no patriot or hero,” Fred told me back in 2003. “I was just doing my job as a volunteer soldier.”
For the record, the Legion of Honour was created by French general Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802. It was and still is the highest award given by the French Republic for outstanding service to France, regardless of social status or nationality. It is the French equivalent of the British Victoria Cross and George Cross combined. Critics of Napoleon’s award once suggested that such “baubles on men’s chests were mere children’s toys.”
Baubles or not, I for one have the greatest respect for what young volunteers Fred and Donald Barnard accomplished that precarious June morning 70 years ago. In simple terms, were it not for them, I wouldn’t have the freedom to write these words today.
Fred remains a modest veteran. His daughter Donna allowed that Fred doesn’t get out much. The frailties of age and diminished hearing, particularly in larger gatherings, such as he used to attend at the Legion and veterans’ events, make meeting people awkward for him. Nevertheless, the victory of landing Canadian troops on Juno Beach 70 years ago tomorrow is very much on his mind. Even more so these days, his daughter said. Fred has been looking forward to seeing the way the TV stations commemorate the anniversary – he’s been watching documentaries and will watch D-Day coverage on Friday.
But D-Day will be close by in another way this year. Donna and Fred just recently got a golden retriever puppy (five months old) to be a companion to their older golden, Chloe.
“Of course, you know what we named the new puppy, don’t you?” Donna said. “Juno.”
While memories of the loss of his brother Donald Barnard on D-Day always come back to him this time of year, now Fred has something more pleasant to think of each June 6 – the new life in his life. Something worth remembering everyday, as we do a veteran’s service to his brother, his regiment and his country.
