Gerald Smedley Andrews was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in December, 1903. He taught school from 1926 to 1930, and then joined the British Columbia Forest Service where he worked as a surveyor until World War Two. During the war he rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and he was responsible for charting the Normandy beaches in preparation for the D-Day landings. At the end of the war he returned to Canada, and served as the Surveyor General of the Province of British Columbia. Andrews was a Member of the Order of the British Empire, and was awarded the Order of British Columbia and was made a member of the Order of Canada. Andrews died in December, 2005 at the age of 102.

George Germiquet was an RCAF wireless operator training at various bases across England and finally being posted to the 431 Squadron at Croft in July, 1944. He wrote to his mother in Saskatchewan regularly, telling her what he could, sharing his thoughts and trying to be hopeful in order to lift her spirits. He lifted his own by taking bike rides around the countryside, finding hope in the emerging lily of the valley of spring and gathering it to keep.

On the night of August 16-17, 1944 George and the other members of his Halifax crew were killed on a bombing operation to the Kiel shipyards. His remains were never recovered. In addition to his mother, he left a wife and 6 year old son in Prince Albert, Sask.

In his kit he left an envelope containing those hopeful lily of the valley flowers but those flowers too would not survive to be returned to his family. Those dried bells would be scattered, that tiny symbol of hope and remembrance lost, as was so much in that long conflict that was World War II.

Jim served in the RCAF from 1941 – 1945 with the No. 6 Group in Yorkshire, England, 1659 Conversion Unit and 431 Iroquois Squadron. Upon his return from the war, he joined the Government Agency Branch of the BC Ministry of Finance and was promoted to Government Agent in 1966. In 1983 he moved back to Courtenay where he retired . Jim died in 2011 leaving behind a collection of almost 250 letters.

Mary Beverly was an Englishwoman who joined the WAAFs in 1942. She was a friend and frequent correspondent to James Baker while he was stationed in England.

Lieut. Dorothy Godfrey, formerly of Crinan, served as a nursing sister on the Western front. Her letter about the conditions in France was originally published in the Dutton Advance newspaper in Ontario.

Willard John Bolduc, DFC was an Indigenous air force officer, war hero (born 28 December 1915 in Chapleau, ON; died 7 June 1968 in Toronto, ON). Bolduc received the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) for his role as an air gunner during the Second World War.

Charles Tompkins was born in 1918 in Northern Alberta and joined the army in 1940. When he was recruited by the Canadian Military Headquarters in London, he helped shape the Cree code used by the Allies using terminology for various animals and birds as code words.

After the war, Charles served in over 25 years in different regiments and became a Corporal. Charles is buried in the Veterans Field of Honour section of the Queen’s Park Cemetery in Calgary.

Learn more about the Code Talkers here.

Lucien Dumais, alias Lucien Desbiens, was born in 1904 in Montreal was a Canadian serviceman, and a member of the British secret service. He was also member of the Shelburn Network, which was an exfiltration network that will allowed many Allied airmen shot down in occupied France during the Second World War to return to England.

Dumais died in Montreal on June 10, 1993 at the age of 88.

Find out more about his important work here.

Robina Evelyn Lee wrote home to her parents in Glasgow detailing her journey from Britain to Vancouver. She travelled to Canada on the Aquitania as a war bride after marrying Alfred Roberston Lee, a member of the Canadian Navy whom she met in Britain during the war.

Leslie Amos Payne was born in 1920 and served in the R.A.F. for 5 years as an Air-frame fitter. He told his family many stories about his adventures overseas including contracting malaria and convalescing in the Himalayas as well as being invited to the palace at Jodhpur to dine with the Maharaja.

He met and married Yvonne Gash after the war. They emigrated to Canada in the late 1950 with their daughter, Ann where he eventually became President of the J.W. Robinson LTD lumber company. Leslie died in 1994.

Hugh “Dave” Devaney spent the Second World War in the Canadian Navy including the HMS Ajax (pictured). His correspondence with his friend Shirley in England reveals him to be articulate, kind and possessing a great sense of humour. You can read more of his letters here.

Roy McNicol and his twin sister Ruth were born in the family farmhouse at St.Anicet, Quebec in 1918. After serving in the RCAF during World War II, Roy returned to the family home. He worked as a hired hand on several farms. In 1948, he married Helen Smallman, a school teacher, and they had two daughters.

Roy and Helen settled in Ormstown, Quebec where they remained until their deaths; Roy in 1999 and Helen in 2004. Roy was an outstanding father and grandfather, a quiet ordinary man, who had the extraordinary experience of serving his country in World War II. He never ever spoke to his family of that experience.

Thomas (Tom) Peter Scandiffio was born on April 12, 1912 and served as a Warrant Officer Class II with the Royal Canadian Air Force during the war. Thomas was killed June 16, 1943.

William Ivan Mouat left Salt Spring Island in British Columbia to join the RCAF and was sent overseas in 1941. In July 1943 Mouat was shot down over Belgium and remained a prisoner of war until he was liberated in May 1945.

Leslie L. Irvin, after whom the Irving Air Chute Company was named, was born in Los Angeles, California and became a stuntman for the movie industry. He made his first parachute jump from an airplane at age 14. He later worked on the development a prototype of a superior parachute and not long after, started his own manufacturing company.

in 1922 his company instituted the Caterpillar Club, awarding a gold pin to pilots who successfully bailed out of disabled aircraft using an Irving parachute.

During the Second World War, Irving parachutes alone saved over 10,000 lives.

Harry Culley, served in the RCAF as a musician in the Personnel Reception Centre no. 3 concert and dance bands, playing clarinet and saxophone. They were stationed in Bournemouth, England, but travelled around the British Isles entertaining troops, officers, and civilians in concerts, parades and at dances. They often accompanied touring celebrities, such as Irving Berlin, who performed at the Pavilion Theatre in Bournemouth in 1944 as detailed in his letter to his fiancee Helen Reeder.
When he returned to Canada after the war, Harry and Helen married and enjoyed over 50 years together. Their daughter, Joanne Culley, has written a book based on the over 600 letters they wrote to each other during the Second World War.

Helen Reeder met Harry Culley when he was training at the RCAF Rockcliffe Station in Ottawa, when he played at a “Red Triangle” dance where she was a volunteer hostess. She worked as a secretary in the Department of Munitions and Supply under Minister C.D. Howe, then later moved to Toronto where she worked at the Toronto Transportation Commission, as it was then called, working as a cashier, a job that would have been done by a man before the war.

While Harry and Helen were apart for 2 ½ years, they wrote 613 letters.

Alan Cane was born in Newmarket, Ontario in 1914. He joined the Canadian militia in 1940 for part-time training and was called up for active service in 1942 as a 1st Lieutenant. He served in the Canadian Army Service Corps, first in England and, after D-Day, through France, Belgium and Holland. He survived numerous bomb attacks and wrote home of his experiences and friendships overseas.

After the Armistice, he was placed in charge of a club for Canadian officers in Amersfoort, Holland. On Christmas day, 1945, aboard the Queen Elizabeth, he was finally on his way home to Toronto and his wife Marion.

Alan was a life-long learner, a passionate supporter of the arts and a loving husband, father and grandfather.

Alan passed away in the year 2000.

Marie-Louise Depreaux was an American born woman who lived in Paris with her French husband, Albert Depreaux, during the German Occupation. She wrote to her two sisters about the details of her life between August, 1940 and September, 1944. In one of her letters, she speaks of visiting the tomb of the unknown soldier (pictured) and the police chasing students singing la marseillaise, which was banned.

Lewis Gabriel Billard was born in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia in 1923. He joined the R.C.A.F. in 1943 and worked on the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines in Lancaster bombers in England and in Mosquito Nightfighters in Europe. After the war he taught math and science at a government school in Nigeria. He returned to Canada where he served as Vice Principal at a high school in Nova Scotia. He was an avid photographer and had a book of his photographs published called Dartmouth in Recent Memory. Lewis died in 2010.

During the war, he wrote over a hundred letters home, which can be found collected here.

Willard Gordon Cameron was born in Hopewell, Nova Scotia in 1923 and grew up surrounded by family and friends in a small country village.

At 20, Bill volunteered to serve King and country and arrived in England in May, 1943 as a private with the Essex Scottish Regiment. Bill landed in France 10 days after D-Day and in July 1944, volunteered to be part of a 3-person reconnaissance team in Caen, crawling through a wheat field to determine German positions. He stumbled on the enemy, was shot in the back, collapsed and fell face first in the battlefield mud. Unconscious and unaccounted for for two days, he awoke and was evacuated first to a field hospital, and then to Lady Astor’s estate where he convalesced for 3 months after losing a lung.

Bill was honourably discharged and returned to Canada in time for Christmas 1944. He married his neighbour Phyllis, had a daughter and son and built a productive and happy life. Bill had told his father that if he ever made it home from the war he was never leaving Nova Scotia again, and except for modest vacations, he never did. He retired from his career as a customs agent and was a respected and admired member of the community until his death in 1994.

James Brennan died during the Battle of the Atlantic on the HMCS St. Croix Destroyer 181 on September 20, 1943 at age 30.

His life during WWII and on the HMCS St. Croix 181 was documented in his sixty- five letters from July 07, 1939 to his last letter August 19 1943, which was his son’s birthday, one month prior to his final service.

From his letters, his descendants learned of how James played the clarinet in the Navy Parade band, skated, played hockey, went swimming, deer hunted and work in marine mechanical engineering, welding, pipe fitting and created useful handmade artistic wood items on a lathe. Originally, he worked as a mechanic for an apple cannery in Middleton Nova Scotia before his service.

Joseph Lorne Moore enlisted with the RCAF in 1943 at the age of 19 and served overseas with the 436th Squadron stationed in India.

Son of Henry G. and Anna Neufeld of Nipawin, Saskatchewan. The Neufeld family got their start in the Lost River Mennonite settlement, where Leslie's father established Neufeld Seeds. Despite the pacifism of the Mennonites, Leslie`s four brothers, Richard, Leonard, Arthur and Edward joined the service. He was also survived by his sisters, Leonora, Elvina, Verna and Donalda. He was single and employed as a General Store clerk. He joined the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps, later transferring to the First Canadian Parachute Battalion and was one of the first troops dropped into Normandy on 5 June 1944. The Province of Saskatchewan has commemorated Pte Neufeld by naming Neufeld Bay in his honour.

More details can be found here.

Able Seaman Kenneth Francis Henderson was born in Saint John, New Brunswick in 1922. As a sailor with Royal Canadian Navy in WWII he served for several years aboard the Bangor­-class minesweeper H.M.C.S. Thunder. He married Elsie Marie (née Goodwin) on February 8, 1944, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. just ten days before shipping out on the HCMS Thunder.

The letters in the Henderson collection were written to Elsie during the period of June 4–25, 1944, and describe Henderson’s experiences during the D-Day landing operations on the coast of Normandy, France.

Frank A. Healy was an officer in the Royal Canadian Navy. He was also a Canadian Press newspaper reporter and his job during the war was to write stories from a Canadian perspective about Canadians in the Navy. Frank married “Mickie” in England where she was serving as a WREN and sent her back to Toronto to stay with his parents until the end of the war.

Frank and Mickie remained madly in love and utterly devoted to each other until they died in their 80s

Maurice Melville Maloney was born in Meaford, Ontario in February, 1918. Maloney served overseas with the 15th Canadian Ambulance Corps as well as the 4th Canadian Armoured Division Medical Corps. He returned to Canada at the end of the war and died in 1996. The Canadian Letters and Images Project collection currently consists of fourteen letters, poems, telegrams, clippings, and other miscellaneous items.

Wren Margaret (Peggy) Helen Chesney was born in Wolseley, Saskatchewan, on July 24th, 1922. She enlisted with the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service (WRCNS) in the summer of 1943. She was first posted to H.M.C.S. Conestoga in Galt, Ontario, and then in September to H.M.C.S. Cornwallis in Nova Scotia. Her final posting was in St. John’s, Newfoundland, beginning in November of 1944.

The letters in the Chesney Collection were written to her friend Miss J. Eira Williams of Regina, Saskatchewan, between September of 1943 and June of 1946.

Mona Parsons was born and raised in Nova Scotia. In 1929 she moved to New York City to study acting and she became one of the famous Ziegfeld Girls. Her acting training would prove useful during the war. While in NYC she met and married a Dutch businessman and moved to the Netherlands.

When the Germans invaded her town, Mona became part of a resistance network and worked to get pilots back to English submarines. In 1941, she was arrested by the Gestapo and sentenced to death for treason. Her sentence was commuted to hard labour, and she was sent to a series of work camps.

She escaped and walked over 150 kilometers to safety disguised as a mute old lady.

She ended up back in Canada and died in 1976.

More reading

Andria Hill, Mona Parsons: From Privilege to Prison, from Nova Scotia to Nazi Europe (2000).

Joan Parolin (née Gillis) was born on January 16th, 1928. Beginning in November of 1940 Gillis attended Queen Elizabeth Secondary School. In the wake of World War II and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Gillis watched as her friends of Japanese Canadian descent were ordered, along with their families, to be interned away from the ‘security zone’ of within a 100 mile radius of the coastline.

Gillis and many of her classmates felt that this was unjust, and in 1942 she began regular correspondence with several of her Japanese Canadian friends and acquaintances.

Joan graduated from Queen Elizabeth High School and received her B.A. and M.Ed. from UBC and became a public school teacher from 1949-85. In retirement, she served community organizations, traveled, gardened, and knitted countless socks for family and friends. Joan was a generous soul who looked out for others all her life. She was a superb cook and baker. She had a ferocious intellect, a quick wit, and a love of laughter, language, and good books. She was an idealist who took her courage in her hands.

The photo pictures Yoshio Nakamura drinking water in the field while haying. This photograph was taken in the summer of 1942 and is part of the I Know We’ll Meet Again exhibit.

Joan met Yoshio Nakamura working on the school paper at Queen Elizabeth High School.

I Know We’ll Meet Again is on display online through the University of British Columbia and was curated from the Joan Gillis fonds.

In the spring of 1941 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) fingerprinted and registered all

Japanese Canadians over the age 16, who were required to carry identification cards until 1949. Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th 1941, Canada declared war on Japan. The Royal Canadian Navy impounded the fishing boats of the Japanese Canadian fishing community, and within two months 1,200 Japanese Canadian owned boats were sold. On February 24th 1942 the federal government authorized the removal of all persons of Japanese origin, and gave the RCMP the power to search without warrant, to impose a dawn to dusk curfew, and to confiscate all cars, radios, firearms, and cameras. Mass forced dispersal and dispossession ensued, with all Japanese Canadians being sent to internment camps, to work on farms, and perform other forms of hard labor, living in very poor conditions through the much colder winters of Canada’s interior.

Image shows a letter to Joan which had been examined by the censor.

Sumi Mototsune met Joan Gillis at age 10 when they both attended South Westminster Elementary school in B.C.

Sumi’s father owned a small boat-building yard on the Fraser River, near the Patullo Bridge.

You can find more of Sumi’s correspondence with Joan in the I Know We’ll Meet Again collection and exhibition at the University of British Columbia.

RBSC-ARC-1786-02-15, Joan Gillis fonds, Rare Books and Special Collections, UBC Library

Joan Gillis fonds

Image description: Yoshio Nakamura [left], Jackie Takahashi [right], and another Japanese Canadian boy riding a tractor.

You can read more letters from Jackie Takahashi in the I Know We’ll Meet Again Collection.

Canadian officer Lt. Colonel Gerald Levenston wrote over 160 wonderfully descriptive letters home to his widowed mother in Toronto during World War 2. Gerald describes setting up the largest hamburger stand in Europe for the Canadian troops, fighting Rommel's men at the Battle of the Kasserine with the 17th/21st Lancers, giving 'marching orders' to surrendering Nazi armies in May 1945, and returning 261 priceless Van Gogh paintings to the Kroller-Muller State Museum from an underground vault in Holland.

Gerald died in 2010 in Toronto at the age of 96 after a full and fascinating life.

One of his sons, Michael Levenston, has compiled all the letters, together with contextual history, to create a book about his father’s experiences. You can find more on our archives and acknowledgement pages.

Edward (Ted) Brock served overseas with the 48th Highlanders and fought in the Italian campaign and later in Holland. As a Lieut. Platoon Commander is was Brock's duty to write letters to the families of men killed or missing from his platoon.

David Lloyd Pulsifer joined the military when he was nineteen. At Aldershot he was chosen for an elite group of about forty men who took a specialized training in combat duty for which they were to travel to various camps in Canada to demonstrate their skills. The group was sent to England without notice.

From England Lloyd was sent to Africa and on through Sicily to Italy where he was killed by a mortar bomb on December 10, 1944 at the Lamone River Crossing.

Eunice Mildred "Millie" (Pulsifer) Burrows - Beaver Brook, Colchester Co., died in Truro in 2017 at age 96.

he met and married Clifford Burrows in 1945, and settled on the farm in Beaver Brook. In 1972, after many summer schools and correspondence courses she got her BA from Mount Allison University. She taught in Wittenburg, Beaver Brook, Old Barns, Cobequid Elementary, Central Colchester, and moved to Cobequid Educational Center when it opened, retiring from teaching in 1983.

After her teaching career, she started writing local histories: Wittenburg, Beaver Brook, The Green Oak area, Princeport, Clifton and Old Barns, and Lower Truro. She also wrote My Pulsifer Ancestors tracing her family tree. She wrote articles and letters to the editors which appeared mostly in Nova Scotia publications. She was an avid flower gardener. Over the years, she had been involved in Truro United Church Presbytery, CFUW, UCW, book clubs, study groups and for many years was known as the cookie lady at ASTE.

“Gordie” grew up in south Vancouver together with his two brothers. His greatest passion as a teenager was his love of horses – racehorses – and he spent many days cleaning stalls at Exhibition Park order to be close to them. He joined the Army during WWII because he felt it was a great honour to defend democracy.

Gordie worked at a variety of jobs throughout his life, but his position of fish buyer for Canada Packers, working at various camps up and down B.C.’s coast, was his favourite.

He enjoyed “betting on the ponies” at Exhibition Park throughout his life. Gordie had a great sense of humour and always had many friends – of every race and religion and his house was a meeting place for everyone.