WARBRIDES-L Archives

From: "Melynda Jarratt" <>
Subject: Toronto Star Article, Feb 14, 06
Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 10:02:41 -0400

True love amid the ruins
Canadian soldiers found romance overseas during WWII, but the real test was
bringing their young brides to a strange land

Feb. 14, 2006. 01:00 AM
RITA DALY
STAFF REPORTER

In 1943, when the world was at war, a young Canadian soldier named Lawrence
Bunston met the girl of his dreams.

When it came time to approach her father, he visited a local pub in the
English town of Epsom, on the southern outskirts of London. "He was in there
with his cronies, so I bought six rounds of beer for them. He sent them
back," Bunston said incredulously.

He married the girl anyway and brought his bride home, and so together they
became part of one of the greatest love stories in Canadian history.

Against a backdrop of falling bombs, air raids and at least a few objecting
parents, nearly 48,000 young English and European women were swept off their
feet and married Canadian servicemen stationed overseas during World War II.
As the death and destruction of war drew to a close and the soldiers
returned home, romance flourished and "Operation Daddy," as it came to be
called, kicked in.

In all, 64,451 war brides and their children were transported to Canada
across the Atlantic between 1942 and 1948 in what has been hailed as an
unprecedented achievement in the country's immigration history. They arrived
in trickles at first. But in 1946, after the war ended, the arrival of war
brides evolved into a massive operation organized and paid for by the
Canadian government.

Hundreds are still around today to tell their tales, minds razor-sharp in
their 80s. And they still hold reunions, albeit smaller than in days gone
by.

This month marks the 60th anniversary of the arrival, on Feb. 9, 1946, of
the first all-war bride ship, RMS Mauretania II, that docked at Pier 21 in
Halifax. Many ships were to follow, laden with their precious cargo for a
harrowing journey across The Pond. Among the women and children were such
notables as author John Ralston Saul's mother, a 4-month-old Romo Dallaire,
now a senator and a young bride named Grace Bunston.

She was Grace Silbey in 1943, just 16, working at a munitions factory during
the day and part-time, with her sister, as an usherette at the Epsom cinema.
She'd gone out one evening to mail a few letters and, by chance, stopped in
at the local Barwyne's dance hall.

More than half-a-million Canadian soldiers had flooded into England between
1939 and 1945, and teenage girls welcomed them with open arms. With Glenn
Miller's swinging tunes at the top of the charts and the jitterbug all the
rage, the excitement that emanated from local dance halls and canteens had
soldiers longing for their next leave.

Lawrence Bunston, a prairie boy whose family had moved to Toronto during the
Great Depression, signed up in 1939 and arrived in England a year later. He
was a motorcycle dispatcher with the Canadian Armed Forces, and would serve
in Belgium, France and Holland before a mortar shell at Arnhem in 1944 would
send him back to a London hospital, then home, and cost him the tips of a
few fingers.

`I would say the vast majority of the marriages did work out.'

Historian Melynda Jarratt

In 1943, however, he was stationed in Epsom, famous for its mineral salts
and horse derby. "This one time I had gone up to Oxford with a convoy of
armoured cars to get special insulation for guns. I was supposed to meet a
girl in Sutton, but I was too late coming home."

And so, by chance, he ended up back in Epsom at the dance hall, where he
caught the eye of a girl with chestnut hair. Bravely, he asked her to dance.
They stepped onto the dance floor and never looked back.

"That was it," Grace said with a giggle.

Their courtship and marriage reflected the time. They exchanged letters
until, ignoring the not-so-subtle objections of her father, they married
July 27, 1945. Like so many weddings held during and after the war, the
couple borrowed clothes and saved whatever food rations they could for the
occasion. Grace borrowed her sister-in-law's white dress, Lawrence her
brother's suit and, with his best man still in Holland, his best man's
brother filled in.

The newlyweds took a short honeymoon in Edinburgh and four months later he
was released from the army and returned to Canada on his own.

By February 1946, nearly 40,000 war brides and their children were waiting
to be transported to Canada to join their husbands, said Melynda Jarratt, a
Nova Scotia historian who helped organize commemorative events in Halifax
last week. Much of her work is posted on the website canadianwarbrides.com,
along with personal stories of their anxiety leaving England and of feeling
lonely in their Canadian homes.

"There were more marriages between Canadian servicemen and British women
during the war than between (American) GIs and British and European women
and more babies born," Jarratt said in an interview from Halifax.

Almost 95 per cent of the 48,000 Canadian war brides (including 4,300 who
never made the trip over) were British, the rest from Holland, Belgium,
Germany and Italy.

"Some had a terrible life (in Canada), some went crazy, literally. But I
would say the vast majority of the marriages did work out," Jarratt said.

Immediately after the war, the Canadian military began to refit ocean liners
and dozens of other ships to bring the women over. Entire cabins were
stripped to create rooms filled with bunk beds for the trans-Atlantic
journey. Medical teams and Red Cross volunteers were assigned to make the
trip as comfortable as possible.

But a ship was larger than a ferry, and the Atlantic wider than the Thames.
Grace Bunston was six months' pregnant when she arrived in late March at the
Liverpool dock and boarded the Letitia, once a troop transport ship, then a
hospital ship that had carried wounded soldiers back to Canada. The Letitia
was relatively small compared to the Queen Mary and other ocean liners that
sailed from Southampton with some 6,000 brides in a single trip.

`We've been a forgotten group. But we built up Canada, what with all those
children.'

War bride Grace Bunston

"The (Letitia) looked big to me," she said. "As we sailed away, they had an
English band playing Auld Lang Syne. I'll never forget that."

Hundreds of war brides and crying babies joined her on the 13-day voyage
across rough seas. There were many tales of vomiting from seasickness and
plenty of dirty diapers.

"You were so sick you felt like jumping overboard," Grace said. "They gave
us such beautiful food, too, that we couldn't eat: meat, fancy cakes, fruit,
the best of everything."

Yvonne Leahy, of Peterborough, who met her soldier husband Joe at a YWCA
dance in London, was just shy of 19 and five-and-a-half months' pregnant
when she crossed the Atlantic aboard the Aquitania. "I was so sick they
thought I'd lose the baby, so they took me to sick bay. It was wonderful
there. I was ... treated like royalty."

Grace Bunston's first glimpse of Canada was a small pine tree growing
precariously out of the water, seen as the Letitia heaved into port at
Halifax's Pier 21. "I often wonder, even now after 60 years, if it's still
growing."

For most, the journey did not stop there. Thousands of war brides were
loaded onto trains that rolled across the country as far as Vancouver,
dropping them at stations where their husbands or their husbands' families
were to meet them. Jack Walker, a medical officer assigned to travel with
the war brides, remembers their excitement as they watched the countryside
through the windows.

"Every time we stopped, they'd get off. They wanted to get out and look
around. We had an awful job getting them back on the train again."

Although the husbands were notified of their brides' arrival, not everyone
showed up. "I remember stopping in the middle of the night in the Rockies
and a couple of brides getting off and no one was there to meet them. It was
very upsetting," said Walker, now a retired Hamilton physician.

On April 6, 1946, Lawrence Bunston was at the station to greet his bride and
they set off for his father's place, a home at Dufferin and St Clair. A
post-war housing shortage left many war brides no choice but to move in with
their in-laws, often causing strained relations.

"I think the war brides that went west had it toughest. They'd end up in
places miles away from anyone or anything," said Leahy, who helped organize
reunions for 20 years. The last one was in 2004, with some war brides
attending in wheelchairs.

The Bunstons eventually moved out on their own, raising three children. They
now have five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, and have lived in
their Scarborough bungalow for 42 years. Last year, they celebrated their
60th wedding anniversary.

"We've been a forgotten group," said Grace, now 80. Lawrence, a retired
butcher, is almost 83. "But we built up Canada, I think, what with all those
children."


Melynda Jarratt, BA, MA (History)
Diploma in Digital Media and Design
Webmaster: http://www.canadianwarbrides.com and http://www.project-roots.com
Voices of the Left Behind: Project Roots and the Canadian War Children of
World War Two is available in English at
http://www.project-roots.com/books.html and in Dutch at
http://www.uitgeverijpica.nl/index.html?page=achterbleven

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• Toronto Star Article, Feb 14, 06 by "Melynda Jarratt" <>