Paul Murphy served in the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War. Paul served aboard several ships, notably the Cobalt and the Wallaceburg, and he was involved in the RCN’s convoy system in the western Atlantic, working the triangle between New York City and Newfoundland. Paul’s ships would escort convoys in that zone, both to and from the battlefields of Europe. Paul recalls the early days of the fighting, when German U-boats raided the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and he remembers the technology that allowed the RCN to gain the upper hand. He also remembers the storms, and the hours that he and the other seamen would fill by playing cards. Paul had an older brother in the war, who was tragically killed in the Italian campaign, and Paul holds on to his medals to this day.
We met Paul at the Sunnybrook Veterans’ Wing in July 2018, when he spoke to a group of students who took one afternoon off from their summer vacation.
