STRICTLY: PERSONAL

1 WAS barely two years old
when D-Day happened. I’ve
seen prainy black and white
film footage, and seen plenty
of historic photographs.

I've read enough books and arti-
cles on the subject o be able to
write a wartime scene in a novel
that ended on a ship offshore from
Normandy, so that! got to try fairly
seriously to envision that incredible
battle without having been any-
where near there, except while trav-
elling by train from Paris to
London.

Not only was I not there, but |
was, at the time, about as far
removed from any battlefront as
you could be, and still be on Planet
Earth: a place called Winnipeg.

It wasn’t just physical distance,
either.

Although I had 10 uncles alto-
gether between my mother’s and
father’ s families, all but two of
them somehow managed to end up
doing duty in Canada, either in the
RCAF or the navy.

Tjoke that my father, a sergeant
Stationed mainly in Saskatchewan,
who trained men how to keep air-

‘plane engines running, was one of
- The Many who fought The Few.

One of my mother’s brothers,
Uncle Bert, won a medal overseas.
But only Uncle Ernie happened to
land on the beaches at Normandy.

- There are a handful of pictures
around of him in uniform, presum-
ably in France.

Veterinarian
hospitals to
get zone look

THE SOUND of “wailing dogs and
crying cats,” recovering from ail-
ments and injuries is not music to
the ears of residents, Coun. Rod
‘Day said at the May 2 meeting of
West Vancouver District Council.

‘WEST VANCOUVER

DISTRICT COUNCIL
by Maureen Curtis

In 1992, a veterinary clinic was
given a business licence to operate
in Dundarave despite concerns
from people living in the mixed-
use commercial and residential
building.

In ‘addition to the noise of the
“guests,” residents said the poten-
tial existed for annoying odors and

an impact on traffic.

Municipal staff are now recom-
mending that zoning bylaws be
changed to recognize veterinary

‘offices as a separate use. Their
locations would be restricted to
commercial buildings without resi-
dential! use.

Council referred the issue to the
advisory planning commission for

, feview and recommendations.

He's smiling in the picture, but
the truth is, he came back a mess.

This is not to say that my father
and other uncles came back from
the war undamaged.

For most of them, it wasn't from
the horror of witnessing death or
being maimed in battle. It was from
foo many years of hanging around
drinking and ; rmoking and gam-
bling with the guys.

Rasy for me to say, of course,
Really, who knows whether it was
the war, or the Depression befare it,
or the cumulative effect of all the
history before, that bent their psy-
ches outof shape?

The fact was, a lot of the men of
my father's generation were sell
destructively hard-drinking, hard-
smoking, wife-abusing guys.

‘The carly deaths they eventually
suffered were brought on mostly by
theniselves.

Emotionally, I tend not to have ¢
whole lot of sympathy for self-
indulgent mate behavior that causes
havoc among women and children,

The good news was that both
my paternal and maternal clans
managed to avoid sustaining a sin-
gle physical casualty among their
sons from the war.

Just to have everyone come
home in one piece was miracle
enough at the time, greeted by
much praying and celebrating.

But there was fallout.

By the time my own parents’
marriage broke up, a few years
after the war, several aunts and
uncles had already separated, a
social phenomenon that, until then,
had been practically unheard of; a
sign of liberalization, perhaps, but
an aftershock, too, from the war.

In the close-knit extended fami-
ly world of the late ’40s, it was like
a delayed action invisible bomb had
gone off in the heads of the adults.

The old habit of accepting a role
in the tribe in exchange for endur-
ing hell privately with the husband
had been fost.

And the men — maybe as per
usual after a war — wanted to carry
on drinking, smoking and gambling
with the guys.

What’s all this responsibility
stuff? Who is this woman? Who’re
these kids? I’m going to the Legion.

The first couple to sepanite had
been Uncle Ernie and his wife,
Aunt Jeanne, one of my mother's
sisters,

Ernie was a genial Good ‘Time
Charlie kind of guy before he v
marched off in the infiuntry to The
Citadel in Quebee for training, and
from there was shipped to England,

When D-Day came, he had the
misfortune of being on a landing
craft that got hit by a shell two and
a half miles from the shore. With
all his pear, he somehow managed
to swim the distance, staggering
onto the beach, dripping.

Wheo he was discharged, he
was listed A- 1.

But he wasn't, His wife could
tell right away something was pro-
foundly wrong. He was sheil-
shocked, but neither he aor the mil-
itary would admit it.

Back then, you just didn’t admit
to those kinds of things. You were 4
soldier, after all,

The upshot was that Ernie
became abusive towards his wife
and two children.

Eventually, Aunt Jeanne fled to
Toronto, taking the kids with her.

Ernie drifted westward ina fog
of alcohol across the prairies,
through B.C., eventually washing
up at a mining camp in the Queen
Charlotte Islands.

. That's where 1 eventually met
him, coming ashore from a boat in
the summer of 1975, not having
seen him since I was a very litle
kid.

It fell to me to tell him a couple
of decades worth of family history,
bringing him up to date on every-
thing he had missed since finding
his place of exile overlooking the
Pacific.

He died a couple of years later.

Thad meant to ask him about the
war, but there didn’t seem to be
time..And the next get-together we
were going to have never material-
ized.

And the door he might have
opened to my imagination onto that

day when he —on behalf of his = +

civilization — swam two and a half
miles through hell into history,
closed forever.

A lonely, battered old man.

4K gold mabe pearl and diamond He
pendant. ‘Regular price $425. Scile Price $295. .
Matching earrings with Eurapean style dip.
backings. Regular price $995. Sale Price $095.

Prices include GST. ;

countdown

5. 17'S
4.

CORRECTION
NOTICE

The North Shore News
apologizes for ati error on the
back page of Sunday May 1.

The heading of the Lonsdale
Quay Market ad should have
read “And you thought all you
were gaing to get was a
handful of dandelions”

The word dandelions was
deleted in error by the North
Shore News.

The North Shore News
apologizes for the confusion
this error must have caused.

Please refer to today's and
May 8 editions of the North
Shove News to see the
corrected version of the
advertisement.

DAVID MITCHELL, MLA

West Vancouver-Garibaldi

Thursday
Friday

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