In this chapter I will try to give an intelligent and I hope interesting account from mid-June 1940 (when I left the track gang to work at Rivers airport) to April 1943 when I completed University. This covers 2nd, 3rd and 4th year Engineering as well as summer work at the airport (1940 & 1941) and at Canadian Locomotive Works in Kingston, Ont. (1942). Each of these activities plus a section on the Manitoban, the university newspaper will be covered under appropriate headings. As I kept a diary during those years I can now use it to pick up some of the highlights and details beyond the recall of memory. While this may have the effect of lenghthening the account I will do my best to reflect these pivotal times so as to give the reader a sense of what it was like to be there nearly 50 years ago!
Though busy at the Rivers air station enjoying the work for the latter part of the summer of 1940 (as I will relate in a later section of this chapter) it was eventually necessary to return to classes at the university. This should have occurred the first of October, but I postponed it until Nov. 4 because of the urgency and need to make more money. I was lucky that Dean Fetherstonhaugh was willing to admit me at that late date.
Though the war was on and work was more plentiful depression wage levels still persisted and it was necessary for me to work through the full summer without taking any holidays (and returning late to classes as seen above) in order to supplement the scholarship. As the campus was 7 miles out of town it would have been more convenient to stay in residence there than in town but the residence was more expensive than living in downtown boarding houses and using a streetcar monthly pass to get back and forth. In any case it was not long before the residences were taken over as barracks for an artillery regiment and fenced off from the rest of the campus.For these reasons I got into a boarding house at 54 Maryland st. which had easy access to the No. 97 streetcar. It was run by a Miss Alvira Bishop who proved to be a real sweetheart, who treated her house full of boarders as if they were her family. My room mate that year was a quiet fellow by the name of Fred Pope. She fed and housed us well for the princely sum of $21.50 per month. The food was plain but good; I can still remember how good her pork tenderloin was! In addition to looking after our basic needs she kept us interested in music, mainly classical and I am forever grateful for her hobby of keeping a classical record collection to which she let us listen. She truly kept body and soul together during the three years I stayed, and as we will see in a later chapter, I was happy to return to her place after the war!
The war was affecting the whole country by this time and it definitely had effects on those of us at university. Students in engineering and the sciences were allowed exemption from the draft provided you passed your exams and took 10 hours per week of military training in the Canadian Officers Training Corps. This was army type training given at Minto Street Barracks; there was no naval equivalent (which I would have preferred) until 1944 by which time I was in the Navy on active service. Several of our professors had served in world war I and were still young enough to serve as instructors in the C.O.T.C.. These included Profs. Hopper, Abrams and Jones who had taught me English, Physics and French during my year in Arts and Science. I can still remember walking all the way up to the barracks on cold Saturday mornings, then doing drill on the old ashphalt parade floor as well as listening to lectures and demonstrations on military tactics, Bren guns, field guns, tanks and armored personnel carriers!
While we were issued army uniforms, we only wore them on C.O.T.C. days and as my civvy wardrobe was not up to much mother took it on herself on her pre-Christmas shopping trip to get me fitted for my first made to measure suit at Tip Top Tailors. It cost all of $30 complete with vest and two pair of trousers. She and dad continued to make trips to the city to keep up to date with me; in hindsight it gives me a warm feeling to know just how much they cared! My weekend trips to Rivers dwindled as I was working on the Manitoban, studies, military activity and other things which made my time a perpetual squeeze.
During the 1940-41 year I was forced to do quite a bit of study to catch up on what I had missed. I still found time to curl on the engineering team and to work on the Manitoban. I took Ruth Wareham (who was a student in home economics) out a number of times, but she caught on with an Aggie student called Harvey Jones who succeeded in cutting me out. I really liked that girl and can report from now (1997) that she did not marry Harvey. Instead she joined the Air Force as a dietition after she graduated and there met and married a pilot, R.Lawlor. As I write I can report they live in Vancouver and so Ruth is still part of our family friends. The loss at the time made me study harder and eventually find other girl friends. Songs I liked from this term were "shout down my rain barrel, slide down my cellar door aand we'll be jolly pals forevermore" and "there'll always be an England", this latter one being a very appropriate patriotic statement in view of England's precarious state at this early stage of the war. My diary reports my attending a public lecture in February by P.J.Philip, formerly Paris correspondent for the New York Times who spoke on "the Fall of France".
On the lighter side we engineers still got out to see movies. Our class also won the trophy at Variety Night. It was a rollicking good singing parody on Hitler and other war matters directed by Carl Anderson, a bright spark of a classmate if ever there was one! I took in the Glee Club's performance of the Mikado and enjoyed it. Other ones I attended in various years at university were H.M.S Pinafore, (my favorite Gilbert and Sullivan to this day), Pirates of Penzance and Ruddigore. (A footnote here is that Anne Walker, a home economics student whom I would later marry took part in Ruddigore, though I did not meet her 'till after the war). My favorite movie of 1941 was "Gone With the Wind". It was the first major production I had attended with technicolor which made quite an impression on me as well as did Margaret Mitchell's great U.S. civil war story. The names of many other movies appearing in my diaries are largely forgettable except for an Engilsh movie called "This Happy Breed" based on the experience of an ordinary family during the first world war and through the labor troubles of 1926 in Britain.
My diary reveals that I passed my exams and felt a bit depressed because I felt I was somewhat of an inward looking cuss; or did it have something to do with the loss of Ruth as my girl friend? I tried for a job at Manitoba Rolling Mills in Selkirk thinking it might help me become a Mechanical Engineer but lost out to classmate Clayton Glenn who I have to admit is also a good man. He later had a distinguished career as a top man at Air Canada during the rapid post war growth of civil airline operations throughout the world. So it was back to Rivers where sister Mary informed me that "Cap" Walley, the Works Officer at the airport wanted to see me. From here it is appropriate to shift to the next part of this chapter where we will review the part of my career involved the construction of No.1 Air Navigation School at Rivers.
My first job was to act as weighman at the scales and keep track of the amount of gravel (and later the ashphalt) being hauled by the trucking contractors to build the runways. The truckers were mostly young guys from local farms who were happy to be getting this work on government contracts after many thin years during the depresssion. I remember one of the Commons and a couple of Denbow boys.
About the end of August, the above mentioned "Cap" Walley offered me a job as concrete inspector for the foundations of the numerous hangars and other buildings required for the air base. As the weighing job was to pack up soon (or move to Carberry) I accepted. My main qualification was that we had had cement and gravel testing in our first year engineering so I was able to put this to use on slump tests, etc..Cap was so named because he had been an army Captain in the Engineers in world war I. He was a big jolly man and wonderful to work for; he soon had me keeping track of the amount of cement being delivered to each building compared with the volume which I had calculated from the plans of the building foundations. He was quite pleased when I discovered that the contractor had not put the foundation on one of the hangars down to the depth shown on the plan. He saw I had ability as a result of this so he set me up as assistant inspector over all aspects of the building construction except the main structural framework of the hangars! This was a great lift in my career as it made me realize that if you used your head and did more than the minimum it would get you promoted. I found I had to put in 12 hour days to keep up with the work, but with the exhuberance and endurance of youth I still managed to go to the odd dance in the evening.
Hundreds of men were by this time working on the site. Bird Construction was the main contractor and old Cap did everythihng he could to keep them working. One day some of the carpenters decided to quit because it had started to rain but Cap got after them and made them continue. After all he had two sons in the air force and he felt it was his job to give them full support. I can report with sadness that two of his three sons (Keith and Ken) were lost later on in the struggle. I continued to learn as much as I could about the specs and the engineering generally, but also had much to do with inspecting the work of the sub-trades such as plumbers, electricians and carpenters. I found the sewage plant and its design quite interesting.
During October we started getting air cadets from all over the Commonwealth for training. An Officer called Ritchie flew in from construction headquarters and dropped in to our office one day. When I saw him resplendent in that natty blue R.C.A.F. uniform I thought he must be some sort of god; how impressionable we all are at the tender age of 19!
One of the special jobs I did was to set out the locations and levels for the footings of the Ground Instructional School. This large two winged building was a key one because it was to be the training centre where the air navigation trainees would learn their trade. A special rush was required to get it built because a British mathematician by the name of Gillson had invented a new bubble sextant which could be used in the air to average the results of six shots automatically; Gillson had been drafted into the air force as a Wing Commander and was on his way over to take command of the G.I.S.!
The time at which I simply had to go back to university arrived all too quickly. A man who became a lifelong friend, namely George Morison, was on hand to take over my work. He was an engineering student one year ahead of me who was prepared to stay at the airport work all winter because he didn't have enough saved to go back. This caused him to fall back a year so that we were in the same graduating class. This now brings the story up to the beginning of Nov., 1940, when as reported in the introduction to this chapter, I started back to 2nd year engineering classes.
To preserve the continuity of the airport experience I will now turn my attention to the summer of 1941, when upon my return to Rivers after exams in April, Cap Walley said he wanted to see me in the airport construction office. I went out with some alacrity and when he offered me a job doing drafting, etc. for 45 cents per hour I jumped at it. At first he said it would require starting the next morning, but then he quickly said, no, there's so much to do here you'd better start right now, so I did. Such is the speed which the urgency of wartime introduces into human affairs! I should explain here that the reason there was so much work to do was that the air force had originally had two Air Navigaation Schools planned, but the location at Greenwood, Nova Scotia proved to have too much fog for the long navigation flights required by the traineees. As Rivers has very good conditions the decision was made to increase the size of No. 1 A.N.S. to handle all of this type of training. One of my first jobs was to do a full plot plan of the whole area on which the various buildings were located, I believe I have kept a copy of this tucked away to this day.
George Morison was still on the job, having stayed all winter as mentioned earlier. He and I hit it off quite well so we enjoyed a great summer working together. One of the things he was able to do was to get me a short flight on an Avro Anson, even though I was a civilian. As this was my first ever airplane flight it is worth mentioning. I had to sign a waiver of responsibility and draw a parachute before reporting to the tarmac for takeoff. The flight lasted only half an hour as it was just a test flight for the plane's bomb sight. I thrilled at seeing the river and the dear town of Rivers looking quite nice from that height. Surprisingly the height never bothered me because I felt safe within the body of the plane, as I have in all the numerous air flights I have made since then. I can report that at this stage the airport was going full blast. There were over 30 buildings offering accomodation for 1000 people and facilities for 12 flying hours per day for each of the 45 Ansons. (See photos). About 100 new trainees were taken in each week for the one month course while another 100 left for active service! What a tremendous, tumultuously active wartime effort it all was! It was really an unbelievable thrill to go out beyond the end of the main runway at dusk to see and hear 20 or 30 Ansons roar overhead on their departure for the night-time navigation training! (See Photo).
In the summer of 1941 "Cap" Walley was in uniform as Works Officer with the rank of Flight Lieutenant. There was still much to do in connection with the expansion of no. 1 CNS. I had a variety of jobs that summer including the design and building of a truck loading structure at the gravel pit near the golf club. "Cap" had decided that we should gravel the road between the airport and Rivers since the municipality were not about to do it. He was really the greatest guy for taking hold of problems and solving them. George and I had also to go to Brandon for a stretch as Cap had been asked to put in sewer, water and other facilities to make some of the fairground buildings habitable year round for the Air Force Manning Depot being set up there. During the time there we slept in the Dominion Gov't. Building, ate with the new recruits and used some of them to spuply labor for various jobs. I recall an interesting incident where we had some cadets from the southern U.S. (many came up from the U.S. until Pearl Harbor) down digging a sewer ditch. One of them looked up at me and said pleadingly, "brothah, does you'all know if we'all's evah gonna' flah?" George and I drew up plans for many of the changes required and did the necessary surveying. I nearly goofed on the levelling job for the sewer trench into one of the buildings. I ended up only four feet under the ground when normally 6 or 7 feet of cover are required to prevent freezing in Manitoba,s cold winters. "Cap" came to the rescue, drawing on his large store of practical knowledge to conclude that it would not freeze as there was always water at room temperature or above flowing through sewer pipes and by the time it would be cooled it would be further down the pipe where it was over 6 feet under. We had to work as hard as we could at Brandon because most of the cadets were living in tents and winter was coming. As it was we were using some temporary camp stoves in the sleeping quarters to take off the chill in late September.I should mention that I got promoted to Assistant Engineer on the Brandon job at 60 cents per hour plus $150 per month living and travel expenses!
I must confess of course that all was not work. Being young we thought nothing of going to all the dances we could whenever we got to Rivers. Cap had his family living in a summer camp by the river, not far from the airfield so I was invited there for the odd meal and met them all. His daughter Nina was a very attractive girl and we hit it off pretty good, (I had pretty well given up on Ruth Wareham). We went to several dances and the odd picnic, the most notable being a day at Clear Lake which ended with a big dance in the superb log recreation hall built by the relief camp labor before the war. That building still survives to this day (1996). I still managed to get in a number of tennis games but was always infuriated when sister Mary with her superior skills was able to beat me. I believe she used to let me win the odd time to mollify me and not have to suffer my loss of temper. By l941 the war was very serious and there were many dark stories in the news. There was the odd crash of R.C.A.F. training planes based at Rivers and you can see the dozen or so crosses in Rivers cemetary which mark the last resting place of airmen from all over the commonwealth. One of these was a Rivers classmate, Albert Wareham so the losses were striking home. Another was the case of Glen Mackay whom we knew as a radio operator who had married another schoolmate, Margaret Grummett just two weeks before he was killed in the crash of a ferry plane in England. Many times of course they did escape from crashes such as the one of an Anson at Kisbee, Sask. where all five airmen escaped unharmed, even though the plane rolled up like a ball. (See photo).
On Sept.30 George Morison and I packed our bags and headed back to Winnipeg on No.2, my days on airport construction were over (except for the 10 days Cap got me to put in over Christmas holidays). I can clearly remember how absolutely elated I was when Cap wanted me to work at Xmas. What a tremendous change the war had brought about to be in demand when so many young men were unable to get any kind of job just four years earlier in the depression. George and I got ourselves established as room mates in Miss Bishop's large front bedroom at 54 Maryland. Next day we took the no. 97 street car to the Ft. Garry campus and registered for 3rd year Engineering, he in civil and I in electrical. About 2 weeks earlier I had made a quick trip to Winnipeg to see how the Manitoban was getting started. Harvey Dryden was now Editor-in-Chief and I was Managing Editor. Since the Manitoban had become and was to continue as a most important facet of my college life I shall devote a separate section to what we did there during the 1941-42 and 1942-43 terms.
The tenor of the times was reflected by an incident where Albert Hamilton, a contributor to our literary page wrote a poem with a slant distinctly criticizing the war. This caused quite an uproar as the war was being fought on a wave of patriotism; the paper got into some of our students' homes and incensed parents got into the fuss. Poor Albert got hauled before the Senate of the University and they ruled he was not to get his degree until he had served in the armed forces. I believe he did later serve in the Navy and so got his degree. Lesson in life, in wartime there is little room for dissention; this is also true in business and government in peace time where those in power are heavily committed to a specific cause!
An important event in the war occurred Sunday Dec. 7. We were busy putting out the paper in the afternoon when someone (I think it was Vince Macdonald) came in all excited and told us of the radio reports pouring in about the Japanese atacks on Pearl Harbor! Basically we were all glad of it because Britain was almost going it alone after the fall of France and we welcomed the fact that the U.S. would now be forced to enter the war on our side.
Another upsetting brouhaha arose at the paper in mid-February, 1942 when Dorothy Thompson (a famous U.S. personality) was slated to come to Winnipeg to speak in support of a war bond drive. This major incident was to affect me directly insofar as my career on the Manitoban was concerned. It all started when Harvey Dryden got a tip from a Winnipeg Tribune reporter to the effect that Ms. Thompson was being paid $10,000 for her appearance. As celebrities were supposed to be doing these jobs on a volunteer basis it was a no no to publicize it; the Tribune reporter said to Harvey, "we can't use this but maybe you can". So Harvey printed it on the editorial page and all hell broke loose. The head of the war bond committee got to the university authorities and they forced the student executive to fire Harvey. Most of the student executive supported Harvey and said so in the next issue of the paper. This only added to the storm, Harvey was deposed and Earle J. Beattie, our features editor was appointed Editor-in-chief. Beattie's first act was to hire Dryden back as an Associate. I stayed on as acting Managing Editor but the matter re firing Dryden created a lot of discussion on campus and indirectly benefitted the Manitoban by raising its profile with the students. The student executive remained catty however; they cancelled the planned Color Night awards due to Dryden and Beattie. As Beattie was graduating he let me do most of the heavy work of running the paper through to end of term and the UMSU executive named me as Editor-in-Chief for the coming 1942-43 year. You can imagine what an honor for me, a country boy from Rivers, who had never written more than a hockey story for the Rivers Gazette, to have worked my way up to being editor of the university paper. I was truly exhilarated by the whole thing, among other things it made me an ex officio member of the UMSU executive, and to use the vernacular anointed me as what in those days was called "a big man about campus"! Did it go to my head? I admit that it did, but the ego rush was dampened considerably by the amount of really hard work the paper took thus keeping my studies and myself in the risk area of failing all of the subsequent year.
On Sept.14, 1942, I boarded a train in Toronto (after working the summer for Canadian Locomotive in Kingston, about which I will tell more later). I arrived into the cool fall air of Winnipeg Sept.16 and that same afternoon started working on the Manitoban, getting the first issue under my editorship put to bed by 2:30 a.m..There were some organizational problems to be ironed out but the main one was solved when Morton Parker phoned to say he was coming back to university and was willing to serve as Managing Editor. This was great as he had held that position before he took leave from his studies. Somehow or other, early in October I got saddled with the job of organizing some of our students to go to meet harvest special trains from eastern universities carrying hundreds of students who had volunteered to help out. The war was everywhere now and so many able men had enlisted that the farmers were desperately in need of help.
The staff on the Manitoban were all very keen on politics and we spent many hours discussing the different parties. I also enjoyed discussing religion with Mary Jane Murphy and Kay Roche, who were both Roman Catholics attending St. Mary's Academy. Kay became a nun after graduation. On politics most of us tended toward socialism. This was based in part on youthful enthusiasm to get a fairer system and on the fact that J.S. Woodsworth, the founder of the C.C.F. (Canadian Commonwealth Federation) lived in Winnipeg and was much revered in the west as a "saint in politics". This enthusiasm flowed over into our Manitoban editorial policy goaded on by John and Harry Crowe who attended that "hotbed of political activity" known as United College. We took more interest in politics than did any other student newspaper; most of them dealt only with student affairs. We did our share of that too, but we also thought it appropriate for university students, as future leaders of the country to become interested in politics. This went to the point where during the federal election in 1942 we came out with a lead editorial "We Want Knowles". This was in support of Stanley Knowles who was the C.C.F. candidate for one of the Winnipeg constituencies. When the C.C.F. people saw this they asked us if some would go out campaigning for Mr. Knowles so myself and others went banging on doors and soliciting people's votes for him. History can now tell you that he was elected in that and every subsequent election running into Pierre Trudeau's years. His reputation in, and his knowledge of parliament were so great that Trudeau established a special position in the house for Knowles. Though I have since come to reject some of the tenets of the N.D.P. (successor to C.C.F.) I do not regret for one minute that we helped get him elected in 1942!
A much different event marked that year in the Manitoban, which was more typical of the things of youth even to this day. This concerned the propensity of the paper to print suggestive jokes in its regular joke column. This got to the point where we had to drop the column, but we coudn't resist the temptation to print the odd one in the little spaces at the sides of the top front page called "earlugs". Two of these I recall went like this:
1st student-"Does your girl smoke?" 2nd student-"No, but almost!" and........Freshman- talking about a recent date:
"Her neck's dirty" Sophomore-"Does her!" These little gems are based on a time when smoking by women was considered somewhat sinful and any reference to sex was not made in public. Anyway, some busybody complained to Pres. Smith and I was on the carpet. He pointed out to me that the abolition of the joke column meant no jokes anywhere, particularly if "off color".
There is not too much more I can remember in specifics concerning the paper. My trusty old diary gave out early in November 1942 so I cannot rely on it for details from here on. It was of course a casualty of the terrific workload I had taken on with studies for 4th year Engineering, the Manitoban and Military training. I estimated the Manitoban took at least 20 hours of my time per week and the military took a mandatory 10 so you can see there was really not enough left for study. In fact, my l942 diary, as far as it went is a litany of being behind in writing up reports for my professors.
However, throughout my life I have never regretted the time spent on the paper. As an engineer it gave me a greater interest in politics and the literary side of life, whereas up to that time I had greatly discounted the importance of these aspects so necessary to any well rounded existence. I would also like to think that it taught me much about writing, which, (although I cannot lay claim to have ever become a good creative writer) has stood me in good stead when even for writing engineering reports. I would also hope that it helps illuminate these humble memoirs so that they may be of genuine interest to all who read them. I only fear at this time (1997) that I may be putting in names and other detail which is of no particular interest to-day. From here on I will not have a diary to remind me of all the detail so perhaps from 1943 onwards we will mainly hit the highlights!
It is now time to relate my experience of 1942's summer work at Canadian Locomotive in Kingston, Ont. It will be followed by a section on aspects of my final year at university (1942-43) other than those relating to the Manitoban, Canada's Other Great Newspaper!
I was assigned to the new "Gun Shop" which had been financed by wartime activity and was making wheels and other parts for army tanks. My first job was to grind and file the rough edges of castings which were some sort of trunion to support the dolly wheels on the tanks; I confess I have never been able to see just how they were mounted on a real tank though I have looked at many models over the years.
I soon tired of this job, mainly because I had signed up for the opportunity to build locomotives, so after a couple of weeks I appealed to the General Foreman (whom everyone called the "bull of the woods") and he kindly agreed to have me transferred to the no. 1 machine shop in the locomotive part of the works. At the time they were engaged in building a large order of Pacific (4-6-2 wheel arrangment) steam locomotives for passenger and fast freight service on Canadian Pacific. These engines were numbered in the 2300-2400 series and the plant proudly rolled out one one per week, all very sharp in black paint (see photo). I went to work on the afternoon (4 to l2) shift and they saw that I got really good experience on a wide variety of machinist's work on parts for these locomotives. The foreman, whose name was Jimmie Lawlor had me do my own setups and measurments and also pushed me on occasion to find ways to increase my production on one or two jobs.
I did my best and on one job on the slotter my good work had an unexpected result. As I was paid an hourly rate as an apprentice I did not realize that the regular men were working on piece work and the rates per piece were set on standards based on what a man could regularly achieve. One of the men spoke to me about it because my higher level of production could result in a lowering of the piece work rate and in effect reduce his pay when working on this particular job. I was incensed at the time with the thought that some men were conspiring to produce artificially low output when we were all supposed to be furthering the war effort to the utmost. Anyway, it was another part of working at the shop floor level in an industrial setting where I carried an employee card and had to punch my card into the big time clock when entering and leaving the shop at the start and finish of my shifts. The only contact we workers normally had with anyone from the office was when young Bennie came around from the office with our pay cheques!
I was very happy with my work in the loco shop and learned to do 21 different jobs on 16 different machine tools such as lathes, milling machines, shapers, drills, boring mills and high speed grinders. On some steam locomotive parts a tolerance of 1/8 inch was o.k. but on the running gear it was necessary to work within 1/1000 inch. I was greatly awed at the murky splendor of the combined machine and erection shop with its huge thundering overhead cranes and the cacaphony of sounds from boiler rivetting to grinding whines to pounding steam hammers.
There was of course plenty of other wartime activity in Kingston, what with Royal Military College, old Fort Henry, and Ordnance and Signals establishments at Vimy Barracks. Harry Messel, Jim Messel's son from Rivers graduated from R.M.C. while I was in Kingston and I got to attend his graduation ceremonies. They were very special with lots of service brass there including the Earl of Athlone, who was then Canada's governor-general. Harry, who was a bit rough as a youth, was nevertheless clever and he distinguished himself by winning the governor-general's silver medal for his graduating class! He married a Kingston girl that summer, served as an artillery officer during the balance of the war and ended up in Australia as head of Atomic Physics in the University of Sydney. Not bad for the son of a Ukrainian immigrant section foreman! Also some of my engineering classmates had signed on as army cadets for summer training at the Ordnance and at the Signals schools. This gave me the chance to spend some good times on weekends with the like of Dahl, Midwinter, Whaley and Shane. We played tennis at the Queen's courts, went boating and rode our bikes all over the place.
Other wartime plants in Kingston were of course the huge new Aluminum fabrication plant to support airplane construction and the local shipyards who were building small ships for the Royal Navy. Dick McIlroy, Geoffrey (last name forgotten) and I managed to go to a ship launching one Saturday. They launched a corvette, H.M.S. Flax and christened two minesweepers, H.M.S. Ironbound and Liscomb. The public were allowed to go aboard the Liscomb, so I guess that was my first experience aboard a warship.
Annie Heye, who ran Collins House was a really great lady. She looked after us like Miss Bishop did and always made us a lunch to take to the shop. As the weather and the shop were warm and humid and I rode the bike to and from work I just wore my coveralls, nothing else, and so managed to survive. Because we were on the afternoon shift, McIlroy, Geoff and I could go on wonderful bike rides during the day, visiting the locks at Kingston Mills, going to Gananoque and generally enjoying the wonderfully scenic Ontario countryside. Also we enjoyed the historic background of Kingston; it was the home of Sir John A. Macdonald and was once the capital of Upper Canada. It's many old limestone buildings and Martello towers (relics of the War of 1812-14) gave the city a particular patina of age.
As my time in Kingston drew to a close, my mother and my sister Mary paid me a visit, so I was able to show them around and point out the historic landmarks. We also took a very enjoyable boat trip through the thousand islands. When I finished work early in September, (General Foreman Mr. Gilbert had asked me to stay on saying he could get me leave from the armed services as Can. Loco. was a war industry, but I thought it was more important to get my degree), we took the train to Peterboro and visited with Aunt Meta, and cousins Bob, Jane and Bury. Uncle Cliff was not home as he had enlisted for duty in the Home Guard. I guess the old warhorse could not withstand the temptation to enjoy one last adventure. He served in Halifax as well as other places.
On the train trip back to Rivers I kept humming the lovely old song, "Going Home" as my thoughts turned once more to the little town where I had grown up and loved, and where I knew most of the people. The trouble now was that most of my own classmates and friends had left for armed service and other jobs created by the war, though a few like my brother Bill got to work on the section gang and in the railway shops. Of those who left, not many, including myself ever returned to live in Rivers, though most of our parents still remained. Dad was busy at the railway because of the heavy traffic and Mary worked at the lunch counter in Gilchrist's Drug store, before returning to university for another year in Home Economics. Mother did her bit for the war by taking in married airmen and their wives as boarders!
Going into 4th year Electrical Engineering I had to start thinking about a future career. My first choice would have been Mechanical Engineering; it related better to steam and steel railroading but Manitoba did not then offer a Mechanical degree. Had there been no war I could have planned to go to McGill and get their Mechanical degree in one year after getting Electrical at Manitoba but I felt I should join the services as soon as I got my first degree. What also helped me to make up my mind was that I so much enjoyed my classmates with whom I had spent the last three years that I felt I wanted to take 4th year at Manitoba and graduate with them.
The result of the crowded year was that having to keep up military training, do my homework, run the Manitoban and take part in some of the numerous college social activities I only got home to Rivers at Christmas and Easter! I can now remember very little of what I did on those visits.
At university I got all the enjoyment I could squeeze in through attend- ing the co-ed ball (courtesy of girl friend Betty Emery), going to the Glee opera "Iolanthe", and the drama society play, "the Man Who Came to Dinner", taking in the various engineering affairs, and finally attending Color Night and our Engineering graduation dinner and dance. In those days it was not de rigeur to stay with just one lady friend, so I variously dated three, Nina Wally, Patricia Howard and Betty Emery. At that stage of life and with my loss of Ruth Wareham I had no intention of "going steady" or as they said at college, becoming part of a "gruesome twosome". I believe I took Nina to Color Night where I got my UMSU award and got a chance to make a small speech as Editor of the Manitoban (which I am sure made a very small dent in an audience of young people already saturated with speeches by people more senior and wittier than me). It was the big night for the U.M.S.U. and was held at the C.P.R.'s Royal Alexandra hotel, now alas, long since torn down along with many other landmarks where I enjoyed my childhood and youth. The grad's Farewell appropriately had an armed services theme with most of the class signed up to join one or another of our forces. It was held in the top floor ball room of the C.N.R.'s Fort Garry rather gothic styled hotel. The hotel at least still stands, but the lovely ballroom now serves as a casino. Betty Emery was my date as (attested by the photo). This was about the first time I ever wore a tuxedo. Though I never became a steady for any of the three girls I still remember them all with affection and would certrainly hope their lives turned out no worse than my own.
In sports I played on the Engineering Hockey team where we did fairly well. I was also on the Engineer's interfaculty curling team and I believe we won the cup. Anyway, I gleaned enough athletic points to be awarded my senior big "E". My sister Mary knitted me a lovely white college sweater with Brown and Gold bands on the sleeves and the E sewn on the front. Over the years the sweater shrunk and I had to give it away. I have however retained the E along with my U.of M. pennant and other memorabilia of those halcion college years!
There were many happy songs and dance tunes, but some I remember best are Elmer's Tune, Blues in the Night, the Waltz You Saved for Me, the Beer Barrel Polka and on the patriotic side the White Cliffs of Dover.
At the end we had to face the serious side which was to pass our exams and get our degrees so that we could move into the adult world free and clear with the thought that we had justified the faith placed in us by our parents, the professors and the war effort. In my own case this took some doing because,as I have intimated before, my extracurricular activities left my studies in terrible shape as the end of the college year approached. However, when I was faced with the actual schedule of final exams I was able to come up with a "do your best" sort of stategy which enabled me to regard the exams as fighting a war with each test being a battle to be won or at least tied. I spent as much time as I could on studies, but I had to optimize the use of that time to the utmost by finding out what types of questions were mosat likely to be asked (as seen from old exams) and how each type was weighted as to marks. Then I would study hard to ensure that I could answer enough questions to get 65%. I did study as late as 2 a.m., but tried to get to bed before midnight on the evening of an exam, believing that a rested mind was worth more marks than a tired one. When I settled into the seat in the examination room with the paper in front of me I scanned it quickly for those questions I felt I could see how to answer and did them right away. Solving these gave me confidence and as we all know from life, confidence is every- thing. Once I had garnered enough to ensure me of a pass, I could then tackle the tougher problems or those I had not studied adequately and hopefully add some marks to my record before the fateful bell rang at the end of the exam.
Of course, every exam completed with a feeling that I had passed gave me renewed confidence for the next battle. Suffice it to say that in the end, when the marks came out I had won them all, though there were some very near misses, like Radio and Electronics where I only got a 55! I believe my overall aberage was in the low 70's.
Those of us who were entering the services departed for training not long after exams so did not know our marks 'till we were in uniform. We were away east for training in April, 1943 and did not tarry in Winnipeg to don our academic gowns and mortar boards for the formal graduation ceremonies held in the Civic Auditorium in May. On graduation day I recall that I was marching along at the Navy's "boot camp" H.M.C.S. Cornwallis in Deep Brook N.S. with a rifle over my shoulder while the instructor taught us how to scatter before simulated airplane strafing attacks!