A collage of veteran Ann Burke’s time as a radar plotter in the Royal Canadian Navy in the 1960s. [Courtesy Ann Burke]

Memoir: Veteran recalls a special relationship with HMCS Bonaventure, Canada’s last aircraft carrier

STORY BY ANN BURKE

I have harboured a deep love of the sea and ships for most of my life. My enlistment into the Royal Canadian Navy in the 1960s was fuelled by this interest and fresh memories of living aboard a yacht on the south coast of England before immigrating to Canada. I recalled being tethered to the mast in a sudden English Channel gale and, earlier in my life, a reckless excursion of rowing beyond the limits of an Isle of Wight harbour with another girl to get a close-up look at HMS Queen Elizabeth. Fortunately, the latter adventure ended happily after a little help from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

As a youngster, I would sit for hours listening to stories shared by a Royal Navy chaplain who secretly delivered mail to ships off the coast of the Isle of Wight as they covertly awaited their orders for the D-Day invasion. I also spent hours looking at the wonderful ships he made from matchsticks, and I treasure the paintings he gave me as a child.

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The new graphic novel Separated from Santo. [Courtesy Heritage House Publishing]

New graphic novel highlights Italian-Canadian internment during WW II

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

Teacher Brian Barazzuol was around eight years old when he first heard the wartime story of his great-grandfather, Santo Pasqualini. It was a tale not of fortitude in battle, nor even of bearing arms for King and country at all.

The resiliency was there, unquestionably, but the familial fight in the Second World War had taken on a far more personal guise, a then-adolescent Barazzuol had discovered. His ancestor was one of 31,000 Italian Canadians declared so-called enemy aliens, some 600 of whom—Pasqualini among them—were interned.

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