Category: World War 11

Sheltering- Mother’s Day, VE Day

~ Linda ~ Leave a comment

Empty Streets. Eerie Calm. No Celebrations. The 75th Anniversary of Victory in Europe, WW11, passed without the usual crowds and with very little ceremony. Newscasts recognized the day and there were comments from our dwindling number of veterans. As one reporter said, “This might be our last chance to hear from WW11 veterans.”

This 1995 article is Mum’s recollection of the first VE Day

Twenty-five years ago, Mum took a tour that celebrated the 50th Anniversary of VE Day. As the article shows, May 8th, 1945 was to have been her wedding day. It was postponed until July 11th. My Dad was with the Canadian Army for the six years of WW11.

Mum died 14 years ago when she was almost 85 years old. Like everyone of her generation, the war marked her and my Dad. She survived the Battle of Britain and he, serving in an artillery unit.

When Mum was alive, (she was widowed at 53), I used to like to make Mother’s Day special. Usually it would involve a home-cooked meal with even a dessert. One year when he was 18 years old (or so) my son did the whole schmear for us both. BBQ and the trimmings. If it was nice, we’d eat outside.

Mum loved gardening and in particular, tried to coax tea roses to bloom in our harsh prairie environment. Sometimes she was successful but I never realized what she was trying to create until I saw their abundant tumble in English gardens. She had a green thumb and even once she had moved into an assisted living Lodge, she maintained hanging baskets and containers of flowers.

Each year, the local Flower Club organized a bench show (likely in conjunction with Stampede Association later on). I helped her with her exhibits in later years (and even entered a few categories myself). Mum won firsts and she, and a good friend, made a whole day of it.

This time of year, she and I would have gone to the local greenhouses and I could get both of our purchases in the car trunk. It was an afternoon of relaxed wandering through the potential of this year’s flowers. The year after she died, when I went myself, I was struck by nostalgia. Without Mum, the greenhouse lost some of its colour. This year, Mother’s Day, will be different for everyone but phone calls can help. I miss you, Mum.

Remembrance Day 2018

~ Linda ~ 1 Comment

 the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.”

We will remember them.

Remembrance Day 2018 marks the 100th Anniversary of the Great War, the war to end all wars. and yet in 1939, Germany invaded Poland, plunging the world back into conflict. By this time, my grandfather had immigrated to Canada, a choice in family legend that meant living under the British flag.

When war broke out my Dad was working on a Dairy Farm near Edmonton. I like to imagine him as a strapping, handsome Canadian farm boy. I think he had ridden the rails near the end of the Great Depression but his experiences would have been limited. I imagine that these are considerations he had when he joined the Army. The picture accompanying this blog shows him in uniform with his family before he shipped out. This is the kind of remembrance, families all over Canada have tucked away in albums or maybe proudly displayed and framed.

Dad was one of the lucky ones; he came home six years later. That is not to say he came out of the experience unscathed. I know that it changed him and he could be morose and quiet. At times he drank a lot. I think it was a self-medication to dull the horrors he had seen and experienced.

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The handkerchief depicting Dad’s Unit.

Dad gave the handkerchief in the picture to his cousin, Nancy Trefiak, who is the second young woman from the left in the top photo. They were close and could use the same biting sarcasm in their humour. When Dad died, Boxing Day, 1976, she gave the handkerchief to me; she had kept it all those years.

I did not hear war stories from my father. He wouldn’t talk about what had happened. When my (then young husband asked), all he would do was recommend a book detailing the Battle of Monte Cassino.

“If you want to know what it was like, read this,” was the most he would say, other than a couple of memories that demonstrated his luck at surviving.

One of them he told, described how he had wandered across a field (perhaps in Italy) after a hard night of drinking. When he woke, the next day, a team of engineers was clearing the field of mines. His staggering steps had woven through them without incident. One other thing he related was a shell dropping right beside him as he slept in a haystack. It didn’t detonate.

Dad was through North Africa, into Italy, Belgium. On his leaves to Britain, he met my mother, the sister of a friend back home. My mother was a British war bride.

After the war, my father became a farmer. I don’t think he had any desire to travel or seek new adventures. He’d had more than a lifetime’s worth packed into six years overseas. What he focused on was keeping his family safe. In the fifties, he earned a private pilot’s license and although he loved flying, one of his motivations was to provide an avenue of escape if war ever threatened close to home.

The Second World War was a part of me growing up safe on the farm in Eastern Alberta. Mom remembered the Battle of Britain and hiding under a make-shift table-like protection when the bombs fell.

The war was never far away for my parents and now on November 11th, I do remember.