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Vignettes from the life of a young woman in wartime Halifax

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An item from the Legion Magazine.

Navy personnel and local women at a dance in Halifax in 1941. [EA Bollinger/1975-305 1941 no. 269/Nova Scotia Archives]

Vignettes from the life of a young woman in wartime Halifax

STORY BY STEPHEN A. HARPER

My mother Ruth Pigott and her parents Olive and Louis lived in Halifax in the 1940s. It was a bustling, turbulent time for the picturesque old city, the population of which doubled from 1939 to 1944. Despite being a garrison town since its founding, the relationship between the citizens of Halifax and the navy was often strained during the Second World War. Ruth’s formative years were spent in this environment, which created unique challenges and engaging stories. Another war had started and Canada was to play a vital role. And Halifax was a major hub.

Ruth and her parents arrived in the city in 1940 from Prince Edward Island, where the family had eked out a living during the Great Depression. Life in Halifax was different. From their home at 42 North Street, Ruth could see convoys forming up in Bedford Basin to the north. She was shocked one morning to discover that all the ships had vanished, off to do their war work. Meanwhile, her new school was larger and busier than she had been used to. Outsiders seemed to be shunned. Ruth’s Halifax experience wasn’t starting well. Eventually, she attended the new Queen Elizabeth High School. That helped. By then, she felt more equal to her classmates.

Halifax had few social activities for the hordes of newly arrived military personnel. And legal alcohol wasn’t easily available. Young trainee sailors wandered the streets, sometimes getting into trouble. This further tarnished the navy’s reputation and solidified civic leaders’ determination to tighten restrictions. To their credit, navy brass responded. They organized events such as dances in the gym of HMCS Stadacona. And the Navy League of Canada was enlisted to help support the initiative.

During the 1994 United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, Major-General Roméo Dallaire (right) and other peacekeepers pose with local children. [Corrine Dufka/courtesy Roméo Dallaire]

Roméo Dallaire at peace in a turbulent time

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

Retired general Roméo Dallaire doesn’t pretend to have all the solutions, but he strives to ask the right questions. He sees a world of geopolitical strife and uncertainty; a world of inequity and social injustice; a world, fundamentally, in need of change.

The former Canadian senator has witnessed such things, such failures of humanity, not only through news coverage but before his very eyes. In 1994, while serving as force commander of the United Nations peacekeeping mission to Rwanda, Dallaire was left without a sufficient mandate to intervene in a genocide that claimed some 800,000 lives. As UN bureaucracy and dubious decision-making played out behind desks, blue beret wearers on the ground remained all but powerless, relegated to the role of observers amid the devastation.

Despite the horrors that left him with post-traumatic stress, Dallaire maintains hope that people, as a collective, can transcend a proneness for conflict to achieve a better tomorrow. It’s why, in 2024, he published The Peace : A Warrior’s Journey with Jessica Dee Humphreys, a book that details his vision for the future .

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Who knit ya?

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An item from the Legion Magazine.

A captured U-190 floats in St. John’s Harbour, Nfld., in June 1945.
[Edward W. Dinsmore/DND/LAC/PA-145584]

Who knit ya?

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

Nestled away on the top two floors of a four-storey stone-and-brick building overlooking the St. John’s waterfront, just a few metres from the Newfoundland National War Memorial, is a piece of Second World War history unlike any other.

Fifty-nine precarious steps up the back of the former warehouse, the Seagoing Officers’ Club, established by Captain Rollo Mainguy—a B.C. native commanding Canadian navy destroyers in the British colony of Newfoundland—is the stuff of legend.

A retreat and a respite for Allied naval and merchant marine officers between sailings on the North Atlantic run, it became forever known as the Crow’s Nest after a Canadian army colonel, gasping from his upward trek, mopped his beaded brow and uttered the immortal words: “Crikey, this is a snug little crow’s nest.”

Displays at The Fort Garry Horse Museum and Archives. [Fort Garry Museum and Archives]

An armchair tour of The Fort Garry Horse Museum and Archives

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

“We have a rich history,” said Gord Crossley, director of the Winnipeg-based Fort Garry Horse Museum and Archives, of its namesake regiment. “We like to say that we have more battle honours than any other armoured formation in Canada.”

The 43-year unit veteran knows such realities better than most. Since the earliest days of its inception in 1912—and arguably before—The Fort Garry Horse has distinguished itself at home and overseas, from its service in the Great War’s trenches—yes, trenches—to its sword-drawn cavalry charges to its mechanized role in D-Day and beyond. In everything it has accomplished during the ensuing years and decades—be it in Germany, Latvia or Petawawa, Ont.—Crossley’s former regiment has lived up to its motto, Facta non verba or Deeds not words.

Words, however, have their place. Having been involved with the museum for some 34 years, Crossey continues to tell the unit’s story, one battle honour at a time. Here, in an armchair tour of the site, he highlights it anew.