大象传媒

Crossing the Atlantic

On a cold day in September 1940 we said goodbye to my Father while I waited with Mother and with my brother Michael to board the ship that was to take us to Canada. I remember that the ship seemed to loom above us, bigger than a house. We were in Glasgow, and the convoy was bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia. There must have been about a dozen ships in the convoy, and our ship was crowded with youngsters being evacuated to Canada for the duration of the war. The only other ship I remember seeing as we made the seven-day journey was the battleship, Repulse. It stayed on our starboard throughout the voyage. We could see great waves breaking over the prow, and it was said to be carrying the crown jewels of the King of Norway.
Anyway we felt it protected us from the German submarines, and when we got to Halifax my Mother decided not to wait for all the others to disembark. 鈥淚鈥檓 a Canadian citizen,鈥� she said and we were among the very first to get off the ship.

Michael and I made our return journey across the Atlantic Ocean in June 1945, after V.E. Day, but before we knew how the war against Japan would end. We were carried in the steamship Louis Pasteur, which had carried gold from France to America in 1940 and then been used as a troop ship for the rest of the war. There were several hundred children with us, all travelling home to meet their parents for the first time in four years.

I remember learning to play chess while on board 鈥� I lost all the games I played at first, but I was told that was to be expected. I also played my ukulele, which I had brought with me in a handsome black leather case. One afternoon we watched a news film brought somehow onto the ship, and saw pictures of the crowds lining London鈥檚 streets and cheering Winston Churchill during the General Election campaign. The result was still unknown as they waited for three weeks for the postal votes to arrive from all the soldiers serving overseas. Everyone expected Churchill鈥檚 Conservatives to win.

Mother met us in Southampton, and we were soon on the train north. Two Scottish soldiers were sharing our compartment. We couldn鈥檛 understand what they said and they were baffled by our Canadian accent. Mother was our interpreter. Before we arrived in Dundee it got dark so we put Michael to sleep in the luggage rack above us.

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