When was 18 and in the Canadian Armed Forces, Ron Raby remembered going sleepless for days while stationed in the town of Soest, West Germany. It was 1953, during the Cold War.
“We had to sleep in tents, in weather below 45 degrees,” Raby said.
Mildred Kennedy’s family served Canada in its armed forces, but few noticed.
“It was lonely,” she said.
Mildred Kennedy is the widow of Gottfried Kennedy, a Royal Canadian Air Force photographer, who served in the military in 1967, during the Cold War in the Canadian Arctic.
On one of the last pages of his father’s old pilot’s logbook, Dave Ward Jr. saw his own name written down. Dave Sr. often took Dave Jr. up for casual flights at the Brampton Flying Club well after his time in the armed services. “I never knew that he had kept track of all of our flights together,” Ward Jr. said. “That’s pretty cool.” During the Korean War, Flying Officer David Ward logged over 1,148 hours teaching pilot recruits of the Royal Canadian Air Force how to survive in the sky.