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Cowboys or kangaroos?

On 3 September 1939 I was with my mother at chapel in York when I heard that we had declared war on Germany. I wondered why many women started crying.

One night the siren went and we all snuggled under the kitchen table and heard a plane droning over. Trenches were dug in open land near us and dad built an Anderson shelter in the middle of our back lawn. I remember my gas mask and carrying it around.

It must have been about this time that Mother and Dad latched on to the idea of joining the CORB scheme (Children's Overseas Reception Board) to send us away to safety briefly (or so they thought). York, a big rail centre, was a prime target - in fact, my school got a direct hit later, smack in the middle.

My parents asked me which I preferred, cowboys or kangaroos, and so I chose Canada. I was nearly eight years old and didn't realise I wouldn't see my mother and father again for five years.

Crossing the ocean

In August 1940 we left York station for Liverpool, but an air raid made the convoy divert to the Clyde and we sailed from Glasgow. I remember the only protection for our vast convoy being the battleship Revenge, but later research indicates there were seven destroyers too. It proved to be the last children’s sailing because shortly afterwards a children’s ship was torpedoed and the whole CORB scheme was abandoned.

The voyage was quite slow — I believe we went far north to avoid U-boats (towards Iceland and Greenland). I spent long periods just watching the sea, sitting under a large gun which had been mounted towards the stern. At a CORB reunion at York University years later I met the young (then) naval gunner who manned it.

At Halifax, Nova Scotia, we entrained for Toronto, two or three days of flat countryside away. We had mixed sleepers with a central corridor just like in the film 'Some Like It Hot'.

In Toronto we were put up at the university, whilst being sorted out. We were gathered together occasionally and were expected to sing patriotic and very English songs.

Lake Simcoe

After a few unfortunate moves, I ended up with a nice middle-class car-owning family in Barrie, which was a middle-class town on Lake Simcoe, 60 miles north of Toronto. They also owned a summer cottage 40 miles away on Georgian Bay, Lake Huron - fabulous! They had two sons who came over to Britain with the RCAF, as well as another son and daughter.

I had a rather free life - at weekends and holidays I would play or roam for hours away from the house at will. I was with the Canadian family for five years and it was a wrench to leave in 1945 and return to war-torn Britain (by the last convoy). My parents seemed like strangers when they met me at the station. It must have been terrible for them to have given up so much for so long and to be faced with a teenager with little appropriate comprehension.

At a CORB reunion at York University about ten years ago, several hundred evacuees attended for three days and exchanged memories. A research student from Princeton University gathered information for a thesis which I later found was subtitled, more or less, 'British wartime children evacuated to homes above their status'. I understand her point but it's a bit brutal considering the circumstances and the deep emotions involved.

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