Remembering a Stalwart Generation (by Peter A. Black)

As I contemplated Remembrance Day 2016, I recalled some First and Second World War veterans I’d met personally over the years, and also several who’d served in other conflicts, including the Korean War.

Some were members of congregations I’d served or of Royal Canadian Legion branches in various communities. Generally, those vets impressed me with their stalwart bearing and sense of duty, and especially their loyalty to our country.

 

That generation had come through the Great Depression of the Thirties and the rise of fascism in Europe. The noxious scent of entitlement seemed absent from them, although I couldn’t miss recognizing the occasional expression of disgust over its prevalence in our current society. 

 

However, today I’m thinking of two ladies who served on home soil during WWII. Bessie who  was involved in munitions work in Brantford, Ontario, is in her mid-nineties. I’m scheduled to lead a Remembrance Day service in the retirement residence where she lives, and I hope to see her there.

Rev. & Mrs. A. Brndjar with Mrs. Doris Ley -- 100th B-Day!

Doris Ley is another great stalwart of WWII, who served on home soil. She was the guest of honour at the country Baptist Church where my octogenarian friend Andy (the Reverend Andrew Brndjar) is long-term interim pastor. On Thanksgiving Sunday Andy led the congregation in a combined Thanksgiving Service and Celebration of Doris’ 100^th Birthday. I was honoured to play organ and sing a song of thanksgiving at that event.

 

Andy took his text from Ecclesiastes chapter 12, in which Israel’s King Solomon describes in allegorical language the changes that often happen as people age. Bottom line: they typically experience a decline in various physical faculties, and in some cases, loss of cognitive function.

 

Doris is, however, blessed with an amazing level of sustained health. Her sight and hearing are good, and she can still walk unaided, except for steadying herself with a walker. She’s always coiffed and smartly-dressed. Besides, her mind and memory are amazingly sharp, and it’s perhaps surprising

Courtesy: Canadian Harvard Association

that she has a full complement of her own natural teeth.

 

It was appropriate that this lady and her late husband enjoyed some retirement years together in Tillsonburg, Ontario, which is the home of the Canadian Harvard Aircraft Association. (The Harvards—painted distinctively in bright yellow—were used in training pilots during WWII.)

I say “appropriate,” because Doris Ley, in the course of her significant career as an engineering metallurgist, worked on the famous Lancaster Bombers during the war. Therefore, understandably, living close to the vintage Harvards was evocative for her.

 

Courtesy: Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum

The Lancasters played an important role in behalf of our country and its allies. Doris’s knowledge and understanding of her professional field gave birth to innovative ideas in helping solve problems that occasionally arose with them. Several years ago she enjoyed the thrill of being taken on a brief flight in one of only two Lancasters in the world that are currently flight-worthy.

 

Significant to Doris’s life is her active Christian faith and the investment of wisdom, faith, hope and love she made in the lives of young people through a Bible class she facilitated, continuing until well into her 80s.

 

Doris, now resident in another community, continues to take an active interest in what’s going on around her and in the world at large, and readily shares out of her professional experience and her many decades of confident trust in God.

 

Here’s to Doris and Bessie and those men and women who served and those currently serving at home and abroad to maintain our freedoms and help people of other countries have them too.

 

 God bless'em every one. . . God bless’em!

 

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Peter A. Black lives in Southwestern Ontario. He writes a weekly inspirational newspaper column, P-Pep! and is author of Raise Your Gaze ... Mindful Musings of a Grateful Heart, and Parables from the Pond.
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Charles Reaper, Quarrier Boy, last living infantry man from Vimy Ridge by Rose McCormick Brandon

Charles Reaper

Between 1869 and 1939, more than 100,000 children immigrated to Canada from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. More than 10,000 of them enlisted for Canada during WWI. That was almost all of legal age and a few that fibbed.

Charles Reaper, a boy who immigrated through Quarriers of Scotland,  was Vimy Ridge’s last remaining infantry man. He died in March, 2003.

At twelve, Charles, a Glasgow orphan, arrived in Canada on April 8, 1912. Four years later, he lied about his age and joined the military. "It was," he said, "the only lie I ever told."

At Easter, 1917, before he turned eighteen, Private Charles Reaper was one of 20,000 Canadian soldiers who formed the "creeping artillery barrage" that took Vimy Ridge.

Decades later, when Charles was interviewed about his Vimy Ridge experience, tears filled his eyes as he recalled the battle that took the lives of hundreds of his fellow soldiers. As his comrades fell around him, there was nothing to do, he said, but to keep moving forward with his unit, over the Douai Plain. Charles was hit by shrapnel. He counted himself

Vimy Ridge Victory

fortunate; 3600 died during that hard-won battle.

Charles spoke little of his war experiences, not even to his wife, but when he did, he always added, "What kept me alive was the man above.” Charles recovered from his Vimy Ridge wounds and by the Fall of 1917, he was entrenched in the third battle of Ypres, on Flanders Fields.

In trenches filled with mud, his uniform soaked, his body chilled, he survived mustard-gas attacks by pressing underwear soaked in urine over his mouth and nose. Canadian troops prevailed and overtook at Passchendaele, a Belgian village, but not without heavy losses, on both sides - 500,000 soldiers died in that epic battle.

Charles was wounded and sent to a hospital in England for a long recovery. "Because of my accent, they called me an Old Country kid in the hospital," he recalled. "But I said, `No, I'm a Canadian.' "

Though he’d been in Canada only four years, Charles developed a strong sense of devotion to his new country. At the end of the war, he settled in Winnipeg where he worked as a transit supervisor and driver for forty-eight years. After the war, Charles met and married Anna, whom he was married to for sixty-nine years. She said of her husband, “Charles hasn’t talked much about his war experiences, but he has always believed that serving his country was his duty and a glorious moment in his life.”

Charles and Anna had no children but were close to many nieces and nephews. A month shy of the 86^th anniversary of the battle at Ypres, Charles Reaper, age 103, died in Winnipeg on March 1, 2003. Charles’ obituary read:

CHARLES REAPER Peacefully at the Riverview Health Centre, on March 1, 2003, Charles Reaper passed away into the arms of the Lord. Left to mourn are his dearly beloved and dedicated wife Anna; his nephew Darren Stirling (Debbie) and Janice Gill (Don) who were always there for him with endless love and kindness. Also many loving family members including numerous nieces and nephews. Charles was born on July 27, 1899 in Keith, Banffshire, Scotland. Charles Reaper, who died in Winnipeg a week ago today, aged 103, was the last of the 20,000 young Canadians who "went over the top" at dawn on April 9, 1917 to attack Vimy Ridge, and by lunchtime had given the young nation its first grip on a fragile national identity.

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Promises of Home - Stories of Canada's British Home Children by Rose McCormick Bandon  is a collection of 31 stories of destitute children who immigrated to Canada and worked as indentured servants until age eighteen. Their coming helped to make our country great. Promises of Home, both the book and blog, seeks to give these children the honour they deserve. To purchase the book, visit http://writingfromtheheart.webs.com.

 

History Rests on the Shoulders of Writers by Rose McCormick Brandon

 

 

William Francis Conabree, an ordinary man with an extraordinary story, sat down one day in 1952 and wrote an account of his life as one of Canada’s British Home Children. When he finished, he folded the sheets of paper and stuck them in a drawer.

He died.

His daughter retrieved the story and put it in her bureau drawer.

Decades passed. William’s daughter died.

Her family, while clearing her home, found the crumpled sheets of paper that contained William’s story. They almost went in the trash.

William had titled his story, “Believe me Friends, it’s the Truth.” He didn’t write about his experiences as a POW in WWI. That would have made an interesting story. He was interred with Con Smythe, the famous owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team.

William chose to write about his early days in Canada and the horrific treatment he endured as a fourteen year-old immigrant boy working on Canadian farms.

It’s not easy to tell of painful events. Most people lock their hurtful memories in a trunk and throw away the key. Yet, history rests on the shoulders of people brave enough to tell. Books about the holocaust, fiction and non-fiction, written for adults and children, continue to keep alive the memory of the worst massacre in history, a massacre committed at a time when the world considered itself enlightened.

The world needs stories from people like William. Most of the 100,000 child immigrants who arrived in Canada between 1869 and 1939 kept their pasts a secret, even from their spouses and children. Of the ones who did tell, few shared their lives on paper.

William wasn’t writing a book for publication. He simply scratched out his story on cheap lined sheets because he felt the need to tell. More than six decades later, long after his death, his words have come to us.

No one could tell this story. Only William.

Writers, skilled and unskilled, play an important role in the passing of history from one generation to another. William’s story came to me too late for my book, Promises of Home – Stories of Canada’s British Home Children.

I’ve shared it on my blog, Promises of Home, in the hope that many will read William’s story and remember the sufferings of the young immigrants who landed on our shores looking for a place to belong and give them their rightful place in Canadian history.

 

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Rose McCormick Brandon is the author of Promises of Home - Stories of Canada's British Home Children. She writes books and articles on faith, personal experience and Canadian history. Visit her blogs: Listening to my Hair Grow and Promises of Home.