Dr. Edward L. Thorne after training in 1941, about the time he met his future wife, Edith, a civilian navy decoder charting the progress of convoys out of Sydney, N.S.
[RCAF]

Pictures from my father’s wartime photo album

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

I was raised on stories and pictures of the Second World War. My father, Dr. Edward L. Thorne, was an air force medical officer who served three of his five Royal Canadian Air Force years (1942-45) overseas with fighter, coastal and bomber squadrons.

The experience shaped the rest of his life. And all of mine.

As I wrote in one of my first features for Legion Magazine, a memoir, “he rarely talked about it and, when he did, it was with such nostalgia, deep emotion and soaring reverence for those with whom he served that he sparked my curiosity and captivated my imagination from childhood to this very day.”

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Ottawa lad, Donaldson (Buddy) Holloway (right), who was killed in WW II, and his close friend Reg Harrison. After the war, Harrison would go on to marry Holloway’s bereaved fiance. [TheCanadianWarMuseum]

Veterans’ post-WW II experience examined in new Canadian War Museum exhibit

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

It’s no secret that the widely known “greatest generation” is fast disappearing.

In August 1995, there were said to be 501,690 living Second World War veterans in Canada.

In 2010, that number had decreased to around 163,000.

As recently as 2023, combined figures for WW II and the Korean War indicated that little more than 9,200 veterans of those conflicts were still alive. That figure has almost certainly declined exponentially throughout the last two years and beyond.

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