Editorially speaking…
Another Remembrance Day is upon us. It’s a day of great importance to me; more important, in fact, than any other day of the year.
Both my grandfathers came home disabled from the First World War; Great Uncle Jim didn’t come home at all.
Dad served 20 years in the Royal Canadian Navy, beginning as a boy seaman and retiring as a Chief Petty Officer First Class (CPO1). He spent part of the war on convoy duty in the North Atlantic.
Chief Petty Officer William Paterson, RCN, 1913-1993.
Anyone who has ever read anything about the convoys and the U-boats, knows that the Atlantic in wintertime was as great a foe as were the Germans. Besides the deadly storms, ice could encase a steel ship and capsize her if not chipped away—by hand. In short, life on a corvette or a destroyer, on a freighter or a tanker, was not only dangerous but damned unpleasant...
My two uncles also served during the Second World War, and my younger cousin Denny, whose family had moved to Washington State, went to Vietnam.
But I was lucky. I grew up in the post-Second World War years, proud of Dad’s service in the RCN and that he was a veteran, and blessed that I was the first of three generations of my family to be spared.
There, in a nutshell, is why I’ve always researched and written about Canadian men and women who have served their country in times of peace and war. I never served because I didn’t have to—so I owe them acknowledgement, respect and gratitude.
2023 marks the 24th year that I’ve written the Remembrance Day edition of the Cowichan Valley Citizen. It’s time consuming and labour intensive—but a joy and a privilege.
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