The year 1941 found my Dad working in an Ontario gold mine. He worked at the mine until April 1942 when his brother joined the army. Dad knew he would soon be drafted so he returned home to the farm in Saskatchewan.
Dad was drafted into the Canadian Armed Forces in November of 1942. He wanted to join the Air Force, but because he was partially color blind that was not an option.
He was stationed in Regina, Saskatchewan and Vernon, Prince George, Terrace, Campbell River and Nanaimo, British Columbia from 1942 through 1945. He was part of a reserve army that was trained and stationed in British Columbia, as they feared an attack from the west.
Mom was ten years old when the war broke out. Her parents would listen to the war news on the radio with the kids listening in the background, too afraid to ask any questions. It helped alleviate some of their fears when their teacher showed them on a map where the fighting was taking place in relation to where they lived.
It was a frightening time. When they went to the theatre there were fifteen minutes of war news with graphic images shown before the movie. Those images were forever burned into their consciousness. Mom would see a plane flying overhead and watched until it was out of sight before she felt safe. Gas, sugar, syrup and coffee rations were common.
Towards the end of the war, rubber was becoming scarce as the army was saving it to use in the war effort to make items such as plane tires. Lingerie companies started putting drawstrings in panties instead of rubber elastic. It was alright, apparently, if you didn’t lose your drawstring.
In the fall of 1945, Dad was home on a farm help furlough when he met Mom. Their first date was to attend a wedding dance in the big, beautiful Marcelin hall. When they were walking in Dad made a comment about the music and Mom thought “don’t tell me he can’t dance”. He was just kidding, and they danced beautifully together; he asked her to save all the waltzes for him.
The war was coming to an end and fortunately, Dad was never sent overseas. He was discharged from the army in February of 1946. I can only imagine the worry and fear people must have felt for their loved ones that were sent so far away. Those months and sometimes years must have felt like an eternity. The magnitude of the sacrifices they made is something we all should stop and think about.
Their courtship blossomed over the next year and Dad proposed on Mom’s eighteenth birthday in January. He got the engagement ring and they were officially engaged on Valentine’s Day, 1947. They were married in June of that year and, as the saying goes, the rest is history. At the time of Dad's passing in 2006, they were married for 59 years.
Whenever I think about their love story, I can’t help but wonder if Dad wouldn’t have been color blind and had gotten into the Air Force where would he have been stationed? If the war hadn’t ended when it did, he would have been sent overseas. What would have happened to him there?
Do you know your parents' or grandparents' love story? How do you keep those memories alive in your family?
Side Note
I played this episode for Mom today at the nursing home where she lives. She listened intently with a faraway look in her eyes. I asked her if she ever would have imagined that their love story would be recorded like that. She replied, “I guess that is where love stories come from; real-life stories with a little bit of fiction added in”.
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