We met Alex Levin courtesy of the Memory Project and the Azrieli Foundation, where he is a keynote speaker and author. Alex’s story is one of the most compelling ones we have heard; his family was from Poland, and they experienced the full weight of the war’s early years, invaded first by the USSR and […]
Michael Lakrits is a veteran of the Soviet Red Army who fought on the eastern front during WW2. He attended an air force academy and was at first a machine gun and radio operator in a bomber. He joined when he was 19 and first faced the Nazis in Estonia in 1941. In December of […]
Gordon Finnie was born March 2, 1931 in Toronto, where he grew up in the Parkdale neighbourhood. Gord grew up during the tough times of the Great Depression and the Second World War, and he and his brothers delivered newspapers to help the family out. His parents worked at the Palace Theatre on the Danforth. […]
Richard James Earl was born July 3, 1924 in Winnipeg. He was the youngest of six brothers and three sisters – in a family that covered a wide range of ages. His father was a tailor who made uniforms for Canadian National Railroad employees, particularly the porters, conductors and dining car staff. He had served […]
Henry Kolinek was born July 28, 1925 in Green, Texas, a small community near San Antonio. His father had been a WWI infantry veteran and during the Depression he ginned cotton and did some carpentry – anything to support the family. Henry attended a local 3-room school and for fun he went squirrel hunting with […]
John Cross was born June 21, 1925 in London, England. His father was a Great War veteran who had served with the Royal Horse Artillery and his mother was a gardener. He grew up in London against the backdrop of the Great Depression and emerging military tensions of the 1930s. John in fact recalls the […]
Ed Marshall was born December 18, 1923 in Toronto, Ontario, where he grew up in the city’s east end. His father and grandfather were veterans of the Great War, and both had served as bakers in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Ed’s early life was set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, so while he […]
Art Cameron was born September 29, 1939 in St. Peter’s Bay, P.E.I. He grew up there against the backdrop of the Second World War, living on a mixed farm in Head of Hillsborough with his numerous siblings and attending the College at Prince of Wales in Charlottetown. He remembers the 1950s as a period of […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 February 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 […]
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 […]