Scott Maclagan was born in Toronto in 1939, and that is where he spent his early life, growing up against the backdrop of the Second World War. The family relocated to the Beaverton area in 1948, and Scott initially attended a one room schoolhouse before going to high school in Orillia, where he remembers being […]
Born in 1979, Mark Suckfiel is from the Pittsburgh area, and he hails from a family with a long military tradition: they can in fact trace their roots back to the American Revolution. He had also wanted to be a teacher, and that is the career he was pursuing when 9/11 happened. The events of […]
John Preece was born October 19, 1926 in Toronto’s Queen-Bathurst neighbourhood. John’s early life was not easy, largely because of family circumstances. His mother had emigrated from Scotland, and – alone in Toronto – she fell into a relationship with a married man and turned to alcohol. John does not have many positive memories of […]
Richard Hough was born in Napanee, Ontario, where he grew up on a dairy farm. He wanted to be a pilot, and that led him to join the Canadian Forces; while his dream of pilot did not work out, he did qualify as a navigator, and he set off to RMC to study engineering. He […]
Bob Gee was born January 8, 1948 in Vernal, Utah, a rural community- that means he shares a birthday with a man named Elvis Presley. Bob’s father served in the Army Air Force during WW2, and his uncles served in different capacities during that conflict too. Bob grew up during the Cold War when there […]
Derek Prohar grew up on a farm outside of Avonlea, Saskatchewan. He attended high school at Notre Dame College in Wilcox, Saskatchewan, where he played hockey, football and rugby. Those sports and academic interests took him to McGill University in Montreal, where he received a Bachelor of Arts and played varsity hockey with the McGill […]
Richard (“Dick”) Pruter was born August 10, 1927 in Chicago. His father lost his job in the tough years of the 1930s though, so the family moved to Westside, Iowa. By 1942 Dick lived in San Francisco near the Richmond Shipyard, and he worked at the Judson Pacific Steel Barge works. He also worked at […]
Doug Raynbird was born September 12, 1932 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He grew up there against the backdrop of the Second World War – without his father, who went overseas in 1939 as part of the first contingent. Doug’s father would be away the whole six years, stationed in England and Italy, and Doug and his […]
Robert Reichmann was born on January 11,1938 in Budapest, Hungary. He later decided to change his name to Robert (Bob) Ratonyi, hoping to escape the name-associated antisemitism that was prevalent even in postwar Hungary. In the early part of the war, Bob mentioned that Hungarian Jews were an insulated group: in November 1940 Hungary’s Horthy […]
Mel McMullen was born June 5, 1925 in southern California, growing up in the Los Angeles area. He had two brothers, and both parents were employed; his father was a master welder, and his mother became a phone operator when the boys were grown. With that, they were insulated from the worst effects of the […]
Don Smoke was born February 24, 1926 in the Alderville First Nation in Northumberland County, Ontario. In 1937 the family moved to Cobourg and then Brighton, where Don remembers working on the family farm. He also had a number of trap lines and remembers that he used to cover a lot of ground along the […]
Wing Yoke Lai was born January 27, 1925 in San Francisco’s Chinatown. He was the fourth of five children living in a small 2-bedroom housing unit. He grew up against the backdrop of the Great Depression in a tough neighborhood where the YMCA and the movies offered an outlet. Wing attended Galileo High School, where […]
Bill Snow was born September 13, 1922 in Bay Roberts, Newfoundland. He grew up in that small community alongside his five sisters. Bill recalls that his father was a fisherman – but that he did many other jobs in the off season. Bill went to school but left in Grade 8: work was available and […]
Kenneth Cooke was born August 8,1925 in East Kirkby, Nottinghamshire, a coal mining district. He indicated that he had a rough early life growing up: there was a general strike, and there was no income. He attended school at age 5 and completed his education at age 14, and then had to find employment. […]
Stephen Cosgrove was born June 5, 1926 in Liverpool, England. He was 13 when the war began, and he remembers the schools shutting down in the early days of the war: there were fears of a German attack, and authorities did not want a school to get hit. Stephen remembers classrooms set up in people’s […]
Howard Kingsland was born October 4, 1921 in Montreal, Quebec, the son of a Great War veteran. He grew up in the city’s north end, and he recalls that while the Great Depression was difficult, the family was able to make ends meet. Howards completed high school and went to work for the CNR, and […]
John Foy was born October 12, 1925 in Rochester, New York. He grew up there against the backdrop of the Great Depression, in a large family of ten children where four of the brothers would serve during the war. In the 30s John went to school and did all the normal things for a teenager […]
Robert “Boots” Chouinard was born December 21, 1923 in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He was the youngest of 8 children. His father was employed in a paper mill and as a barber. Robert attended various schools, including Massanutten Military Academy in Woodstock, Virginia, where he played football on a scholarship. He said that he went from being […]
Henry Sienkiewicz was born January 4, 1923 in Syracuse, New York. He grew up in a working class neighborhood, where his father worked in the local foundry. Henry worked a variety of jobs himself in the prewar years, helping the family to make ends meet during the Great Depression. When the war came Henry knew […]
Bill Balabanow was born February 17, 1926 in the little town of Blue Ridge Summit in southern Pennsylvania, though the family moved to Lancaster in 1931, and that is where he spent most of his childhood. Bill’s parents divorced when he was an infant, so his parental and family memories come mainly from his mother’s […]
Henry Beissel was born April 12, 1929 in Germany. It was a period where Germany was still struggling to recover from the punitive terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which were at the time of Henry’s birth coupled with the impacts of the Great Depression. Henry grew up in Nippes, near Cologne; both parents were […]
Jozef Palimaka was born May 9, 1926, in Czaple Male, a village not too far from Krakow, Poland. His parents had a small farm there, though they made the decision to relocate to Czarne Konce, near Lviv, a few years later, when they purchased a larger farm with an orchard. As Jozef was the oldest […]
Frank “Tex” Davis was born August 24, 1926 in Sackville, Nova Scotia. He grew up there against the backdrop of the Great Depression, second youngest of eight children, and Tex’s mother died when he was only ten years old. Tex remembers his father doing what he could to keep”the wolf from the door”. Tex’s family […]
Clayton Bihl was born September 9, 1923 in Buffalo, New York. He grew up there against the backdrop of the Great Depression, attending Bennett High School and Canisius College. He and some friends enlisted in the army in 1938, and Clayton went through all the regular training. He decided though that the army life was […]
Emily Drake was born July 4, 1925 in Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania. Her parents had emigrated from Vilna in the period before the First World War, and Emily remembers growing up speaking Polish at home. Her childhood took place during the Great Depression, but – too young to be aware of pressing economic and political matters- she […]
George Pouder was born January 18, 1923 in New York City. He grew up in the Bronx during the difficult times of the Great Depression, a period that impacted his family and the neighborhood. George recalls that the quality of his schooling varied, but that he took full advantage of the city, exploring it with […]
Wolfram Forster was born October 22, 1925, in Berlin, Germany. He grew up in that city during the interwar years, witnessing the political changes that were taking place around him as he attended school. Wolfram’s father was a Great War veteran who became a police officer, and who later fired when he refused to join […]
Wayne Bell was born June 6, 1947, in Montreal. He grew up on Montreal’s south shore, with a strong affinity to the United States, where Plattsburgh offered luxuries such as drive-in theatres. Wayne and his friends would go there often, visiting the beach and escaping the 1960s political tensions that were emerging in Quebec. While […]
Chris Snider was born March 19, 1932 in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. His parents were Canadian but were living in the U.S. at the time, and as the 1930s unfolded they moved a few more times, eventually landing in Oakville, Ontario. The realities of the Great Depression had kept them on the move, as Chris’s father looked […]
Bob Harbula was born January 2, 1931 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He grew up in a working class area there, and he expected to work on the railroad, as had his father and grandfather. As a young boy he saw the Second World War unfold all around him, and he was inspired by the stories of […]