Fearing an enemy invasion, thousands of Canadian girls as young as sixteen joined volunteer militia groups in wartime, learning how to conduct air raid patrols, use firearms and incredibly, how to handle bombs!
When Janet Mears of Australia started searching for information about her great-uncle Maxwell Cassidy, killed in a 1944 training accident in Canada, the results were astonishing. Not only did she discover that Max had been in love, she found the Canadian girl he left behind – alive and well, and eager to share her memories.
“I won’t go! I’m not going!” Lancaster pilot Edmund Kluczny (nicknamed “Captain Cool” by his crew) was horrified when he heard his bomb aimer’s outburst. Tonight’s target would take them deep into Germany’s heavily-defended industrial area. The pilot needed his crew inside their Lancaster and ready for takeoff, but the bomb aimer was refusing to get on board. This was a problem that Captain Cool needed to solve, and fast.
A few years before he died, I asked my father what was the best Christmas he could remember. I expected him to recall his childhood, or a time when his own children were young. But without hesitation, he said: “Christmas 1945!”
A heartfelt question was posed in one of his wartime letters, written the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, by a young Canadian airman who didn’t want to fight but was determined to do his duty. “Damn this war anyhow, why can’t people just get along?” Raymond James Barnes of Battleford, Saskatchewan joined the […]
Very few Royal Canadian Air Force airwomen received the coveted posting overseas but Nancy Lee, from a remote ranch in the Rocky Mountains, was one of the fortunate few. A few years before she died, I was lucky enough to interview Nancy, still as smart and strong-minded and sassy as ever, about her wartime experiences. […]
