BOCA INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY

Friday, January 6th, 2012. 1 a.m.

I have the story somewhere but I cannot put my finger on it at the moment. It is a newpaper photo and caption in either a Kingston of Gananoque, Ontario paper. It tells the story of a lost lighter. When Canada first went to war as the Canadian Armed Service Force, It sent a number of ship loads of hastly trained and poorly equipped soldiers to England to take over the vacant Camp Aldershott to provide protection to England as something like 300,000 or more troops had all been sent to Europe to fight the forces of the Nazi party. Unknown at the time was the fact that the war was actually not going well for the British and culminated in the race to get a total of 336,000 soldiers of several nationalities out of Dunkirk, France before the Germans took over. The losses were devastating to the British but had to be endured. In any case, one of the replacement soldiers, upon leaving Kingston where he did his brief 3 months of training, was given a small pocket lighter with a military crest on it by his family. When tht soldier decided after a year in England that he would join the RAF, he turned in his uniform and lost his lighter around the same time. Soon forgotten as one of those unfortunate things that happened in life, the war went on. Back in Canada by mid-1944 and by then having served in 4 distinct group in two military forces, as he was now an officer in the RCAF, he could not wait until the war was over. finally that day came, 2 kids arrrived with his wife from England and they settled into an apartment in  Pendleton, Ontario while they waitied for accommodations to become available in Montreal. Finally that day came, the family added a daughter and a third son and the group of six moved into a new home. The decades past the families left Montreal because of the political situation and settled at Dog Lake closer to Gananoque than Kingston up highway 15 near Seeley's Bay. Inflation took a big chunk out of the money they had set aside to enjoy their retirement. Eventually, now closer to old age, he found himself needing additional assistance to keep the place going. He had heard about special programs for veterans and decided to contact them. When his fiel was opened, there was a note inside saying the Archives should be contacted with any new address. The next thing turned out to be the return of his old lighter which had been found in his jacket pocket when he turned in his Canadain army gear at the end of 1940.  Somehow, that lighter had been found, returned to Canada and held in the Archives until the moment his file was open and a note was found giving his latest address.

That NPAM motorcycle dispatch rider, Canadian signal corps lorry driver, RAF pilot and RCAF administrator with active combat experience as a volunteer, was my own father.