John Thornton was nearly six years old and the noise of war seemed all around them, he and his mother sought shelter beneath the stairs of their home in a small town north of London, England. “There was a lot of activity at night time with the convoys coming through, particularly the tanks that came through the main street where we lived,” he said, “like a minor earthquake that would shake and rumble the houses.”
The intersection of Carlaw and Mortimer avenues is safer because Jack Aldred cared enough about people to fight for a crosswalk. Aldred, 91, died at his apartment complex on Tuesday following a heart attack. Mary Fragedakis, councillor for Ward 29, (Toronto-Danforth) recognized Aldred’s community service. “He is a great example of civic engagement,” she said. “He gave us all a sense of the problem at the intersection and how it impacts the kids.”
He shouldn’t have come home alive. But then he shouldn’t have enlisted in the first place. At least not when he did. At only 16 years old and underage, Don Stewart tricked his mother into signing a paper that would allow him to join the navy.
This week, Joanne Barden stood at the entrance of the newly opened Target store on Danforth Avenue. She had a box of poppies slung around her neck. “Two young men… they took poppies and made a donation … and they told me they respected our veterans very much, and they respected the military, and I found that extremely rewarding,” Barden said.
While some victims of the Second World War consider the Allies their liberators, one Holocaust survivor considers music his liberator.
In 1941, following their eviction from Romania, Joseph Leinburd and his family took all of their belongings with them on a train, endured a death march, then sold most of their belongings for some shelter in Ukraine.
Under such harsh conditions, Leinburd said he relied on his attachment to music, to bring hope during the war.
“I listen to music every night,” Leinburd said. “I do many things that other people in my situation don’t do.”
A former mayor of East York says the Second World War and Canadian vets have left a lasting impression on his community.
Part way through the 1939-1945 war, the Canadian Government faced the task of moving soldiers back into civilian life when hostilities ended. To ease the transition, Parliament passed the Veterans’ Land Act in 1942 to encourage veterans to purchase land and houses throughout Canada.
Alan Redway, the former mayor of East York, believes the Act helped shape East York into a community that relied on veterans for growth.
“After the First World War, there were veterans who built houses in the southeast corner of East York,” he said.
Ted Conover’s last day of combat in the Second World War brought trauma and recognition. “It was the 1st of May, 1944, and we’d been very successful in getting prisoners up to that point,” Conover said. “What we were unaware of was that the area where we were to take up our position was mined by the Germans with shoe mines.”
If William Salo had miscalculated that day in the winter of 1945, it might have meant death for him and his student navigator. “It was like in a fog. I lost sight of the ground. The plane kept on dropping, but he didn’t say anything,” Salo said. As the qualified pilot of a twin-engine Anson training aircraft, Salo was responding to the directions of his student navigator. They found themselves in a fog bank and Salo kept waiting for the observer-in-training to give him directions through the fog.
Renate Krakauer’s parents, William and Charlotte, lost many of their relatives and friends that day. “They came knocking on doors and dragged all the Jews out and they took them to the Jewish cemetery, where they had dug these deep pits,” Krakauer said. “And they had people lined up, [naked]. They would line up at the edge of the pit in rows. First row, bang, bang, bang, bang, into the pit. Second row, bang, bang, bang.”
Clarence Buchner still finds it strange spending most of his time on land. “I grew up on Pelee Island,” Buchner said. “The thought of still being on the water while at war sounded just like a dream come true.” While serving in the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War seemed a hasty choice, Buchner feels it was the perfect fit.