My mother, Vivian, received a lovely gift last week from a group of quilters in Kensington. The women are part of a volunteer program called Quilts of Valour where quilters donate their time and money to create quilts for military veterans to honour their service and provide comfort.
The program started in Edmonton in 2006 and nearly 24,000 quilts have been distributed in Canada since then. My mother is now one of the few Second World War veterans left on Prince Edward Island, and it was so thoughtful of them to honour her in this way.
Both my mother and father served in the RCAF during the Second World War. They only wore their medals on Remembrance Day and then would put them back into a cardboard box in their dresser. It was only recently I realized their medals had been mailed to them. They had filled in a form, mailed it to Ottawa, and their medals, ribbons, clasps and pin bar was sent to them. There was no presentation ceremony like you imagine from Hollywood movies, no generals, no salutes or photographs.
In contrast, this quilt presentation was a touching and personal event. One of the quilters came to our home and, in that PEI way, she happened to be someone who had gone to my high school a bit ahead of me and who had also later gotten to know my mother as they swam at the same fitness facility; she was thrilled to be able to do the presentation and we were equally pleased to see her again after many years. She explained the origins of Quilts of Valour, told about the women who had created the quilt, and then asked my mother to stand so she could wrap it around her.
My mother was amazed to receive such a beautiful gift and touched by this unexpected kindness. The colourful quilt has a soft, flannel backing and radiates the love that was put into every stitch.
When I heard that a restored Canso airplane was going to be visiting the former air force base in Summerside, I switched a few things around so I could take my mother to see it.
My mother was a clerk in the Royal Canadian Air Force (Women’s Division) during the Second World War, serving from April 1943 to January 1945. She was posted to the RCAF base at Torbay, Newfoundland for 13 months and would have been there at this exact time 80 years ago.
Seeing a Canso, loaded with bombs and depth charges to hunt German U-boats, would have been an everyday thing for her then, nothing special, but today was certainly remarkable. She was interested to see one again, and thought it was smaller than she remembered. This Canso looked very different as it was painted as a water bomber, which was its last role as a working aircraft, and not as a military plane. She found it difficult to believe that 80 years had passed, thought a lot about all the friends she had made, now all gone.
It was windy with rain threatening as I pushed her wheelchair across the tarmac towards the plane. She learned to march on a similar runway in Ottawa, marching back and forth, back and forth. They issued the women shoes that were one size too big because all the marching would swell even the daintiest of WD feet.
It was to that very Summerside runway that she had been headed one day, probably also in 1944, when the plane she had hitched a ride from Torbay to visit her family on PEI spotted a U-boat surface in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. They scrambled to get out of the area and radio the submarine’s position so bombers could be dispatched. She had been sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, so hopped out pretty quickly and the plane returned to Torbay. She never heard, or has forgotten, if that U-boat was sunk.
The Canso we saw today is one of only 13 remaining of the 3,600 built. My mother, once one of 17,000 WDs, is probably one of only a few still alive. Possibly one of the last people who saw a U-boat. My mother is still very much who she has always been – independent, generous, jolly, disciplined – but she has also morphed into being a living historical artefact, still able to tell her story at nearly 102. Rare birds indeed.
Vivian Phillips, Eptek Centre, Summerside, with her blue RCAF (WD) uniform and kit bag in the background, November 14, 2021
My mother had recovered enough from a recent illness to attend the third and final launch of a book, We’ll Meet Again, that features stories about PEI women who served in the Second World War. The author, Katherine Dewar, has been so lovely to my mother and the other women veterans, and she made a point of featuring my mother’s story today as she had been unable to go to the first launch with the other surviving veterans.
Although seating was very limited due to pandemic restrictions, we were still able to say hello to friends and family who attended, and my mother had the unusual experience of hearing someone reading her words out loud and seeing her uniform and other pieces of memorabilia on display. On the way home I asked her how she had found the whole thing, and she said she didn’t think she had really done much more than outlive everyone else, that her story wasn’t that special! Like most things in her life, she has just taken it all in her stride, which I’m sure is part of how you live to be 99.
Katherine has dedicated much of her historical research and writing to preserving the stories of PEI women, accomplished women who had exciting and important careers, and even had military honours, but who often lived quiet lives after the fact, who blended back into society because that was what society demanded women do. My mother’s exit interview from the RCAF, for instance, an organization that had given her opportunities for training, adventure and independence she would never had at home, suggested that she would be best suited to being a housewife. She went on to do that, and so much more. Tomorrow she plans to bake cookies to thank the hospital staff who recently cared for her, still defying expectations, looking and acting beyond herself, an inspiration to all who know and love her.
My mother was asked if her RCAF uniform could be used in a display in connection with the upcoming publication of a book by PEI historian Katherine Dewar about PEI women who served in the Second World War. Katherine and Lois Brown, who was with the Canadian Women’s Army Corps in the Second World War and is a lively 97-year-old, came up last week to take the bits and pieces my mother has.
My mother’s air force blue uniform is nearly complete, except for stockings and shoes, which she used after the war and wore completely out. Her khaki uniform has always been a bit of a mystery to me. She always called it her summer uniform, but I believe it was what she was wearing when she ended her service on January 9, 1945, as her last meal card and clearance certificate (incorrectly dated as 1944) are still in the inside jacket pocket. As she ended her military career in Halifax, in January, it would have been far from summer weather! I hope to get more information from PEI Regiment Museum curator Greg Gallant about that uniform.
I also gathered up various pins that were scattered around the house in different little boxes. She would have received or bought most of them during the war, the General Service Badge would have been worn after the war (probably by my father, but not sure), and another is one of many pins she’s been sent periodically by this or that group honouring different battles and anniversaries.
RCAF (WD) poster
I imagine Katherine’s book will touch on the fact that women who had served weren’t regarded as real veterans immediately after the war. Women had been recruited to supporting roles to free up men to assume combat roles, so their service wasn’t considered to be the same.
While both of my parents were in the RCAF during the Second World War, neither of them served in Europe, spending their time in Canada or Newfoundland, which was considered an overseas posting as a British colony. My father was always viewed as being the “real” veteran in our family, even though his role as an RCAF mechanic put him in no greater danger than my mother. They were both involved in the background of the Battle of the Atlantic during their time in Newfoundland, he at Gander and she at Torbay, and I’m sure both of those stations were on the German hit list for a possible invasion of North America, which thankfully never happened.
My father mistakenly wore my mother’s medals all his life, and it was only after his death, when I was asked to help with an award nomination for my mother, that I found out she had been given an extra medal (The Defence Medal) because of the length of time she had spent in Newfoundland, and my father’s time there hadn’t qualified.
I don’t believe for a second that my father even knew what he had done. I suppose when the medals arrived in the mail (ex-service members applied to get them after the war and they were mailed in a little box, no dramatic presentation by a senior officer as portrayed in movies), he just assumed the three were for him as he served for nearly 5 years and my mother for less than 2.
So my mother had worn my father’s two medals, never knowing the difference. When I brought this error to her attention, I didn’t think she would bother to start wearing her real ones, but she did, and still proudly wears them to Remembrance Day services and other official events. And now, because she is one of the few veterans left, people sometimes thank her for her service.
My mother, Vivian, says her time serving in the RCAF Women’s Division during the Second World War was one of the happiest periods of her life. That might sound bizarre to us now, but even those veterans I knew who fought in Europe only told stories of the funny things that happened, both to keep buried as deeply as possible the horrible events they saw, and knowing those who hadn’t been there could never understand what they had been called upon to do and witness.
Before enlisting, my mother had never travelled more than a few miles from home, grew up without running water or electricity, had been keeping house for her father and brother, and working hard on their farm. She served in Canada and Newfoundland, far from the battlefields, so the war really gave her adventure and freedom from drudgery. There were dozens of other women in her group, and she made lifelong friends.
Amazingly, my mother is still in contact with one of the women she trained and served with, a lady named Vina Trowsdale who lives in North Bay, Ontario. They write to each other frequently, sending long letters and newspaper clippings on things the other might find interesting.
I was just searching to see if there was anything online about Vina and found this great interview from 2015. I just showed it to my mother, and she said this is basically her story, too. Thanks, Vina!
Vina Trowsdale and Vivian Phillips, Foxley River, 1971, 30 years after meeting in Rockcliffe, ON
