We met Alex Levin courtesy of the Memory Project and the Azrieli Foundation, where he is a keynote speaker and author. Alex’s story is one of the most compelling ones we have heard; his family was from Poland, and they experienced the full weight of the war’s early years, invaded first by the USSR and […]
Michael Lakrits is a veteran of the Soviet Red Army who fought on the eastern front during WW2. He attended an air force academy and was at first a machine gun and radio operator in a bomber. He joined when he was 19 and first faced the Nazis in Estonia in 1941. In December of […]
Elizabeth Samson was born June 20, 1922 in Coleman, Alberta. Her maternal grandparents were indigenous: they were non-registered Cree First Nations. Elizabeth’s father was of German descent, an immigrant from the U.S. She grew up in a large family with five siblings; it was a mining area where the workers came from everywhere – a […]
Harold McLean was born September 11, 1925 in Toronto, Ontario. He grew up in the city’s Mount Pleasant area, attending Northern Collegiate. His father worked for the Otis Elevator Company, so the family was able to make ends meet during the hard days of the Depression. Harold was in Grade 9 when the war began; […]
Nancy Jurgevich was born into a military family on July 20, 1940 in Stoystown, Pennsylvania. Her father was in the navy and had served on the USS Columbia during the Second World War, and an uncle fought in the Korean War. In high school she wanted to travel, but there was no money and she […]
Gerry Teldon was born August 28, 1924 in the Bronx, New York. The family moved to Cedarhurst, Long Island when Gerry was quite young, and that is where he grew up. His father, a Great War veteran, ran a successful dressmaking business, so even in the dark days of the Depression the family was doing […]
Joe Sciarra was born December 21, 1924 in Los Angeles, California. He grew up there with his five siblings against the backdrop of the Great Depression, attending school and going to the beach – all typical things from the time period. Joe graduated high school in 1942, and he was quickly inducted into the army […]
William (Bill) Dibble was born October 7, 1921 in Buffalo, New York. His father was a veteran of the Great War who was wounded several times and who was gassed – it disabled him significantly and he died young. An only child, Bill grew up against the backdrop of the Great Depression and attended Boys’ […]
Jacob (Jake) Ruser was born December 27, 2025 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of a Great War veteran. His parents moved to the nearby town of Conshohocken when he was young, and that is where he and his sister grew up, all against the backdrop of the Great Depression. Like many kids, Jake did not […]
Burdett Sisler was born April 14, 1915 in Akron, Ohio. His father worked for the Goodyear Rubber Company, and early in the century he was tasked with finding a location for a factory in Canada, and the family ended up settling in New Toronto (present-day Etobicoke). That is where Burd and his siblings grew up, […]
James “Jim” Devlin was born February 13, 1938 in Ireland. He grew up in Ulster, and he recalls the bigotry and hatred of those times: he was Catholic in a predominantly Protestant area. He came to Canada in 1954, eager to get away from those tensions and the economic circumstances of his homeland. Jim’s parents […]
George Rubin was born May 7, 1925 in Brooklyn, New York, and that is where he grew up during the Depression and early war years. He graduated from Erasmus Hall High School in 1943, and he recalls that most of the young men in his class had either enlisted or were drafted right as they […]
John Neu was born August 21, 1923. He grew up in a German-speaking region of Romania, where his family had deep roots. Conditions were difficult there in the post-Great War era though, and John’s parents made the decision to emigrate to Canada in 1928. They initially headed to the Prairies, but they ended up in […]
Russ Freeburg was born March 4, 1923 in Galesburg, Illinois. He grew up in the railroad town against the backdrop of the Great Depression, graduating from high school in 1941. Just a few months later Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, bringing the US into the war. Russ remembers that he and others saw the clouds of […]
Una Golding (nee Sinclair) was born September 27, 1926 in Fairford, Manitoba. She grew up in that small farming community, where she was raised by her mother and grandfather. Una recalls going to a one room schoolhouse in her small town; to go to high school she would have had to go to Winnipeg, which […]
Stan Deveau was born November 19, 1922 in Watrous, Saskatchewan, a small farming community. He grew up there during the difficult days of the Great Depression, when economics and the environment conspired to create the “Dust Bowl”, forcing the family to move to British Columbia in 1938. When the war came along, Stan’s brother decided […]
Alice Nowaczyk was born November 7, 1924 in Bodfari in north Wales, not too far from Wrexham. Her father was a Great War veteran who also saw service in World War Two; he had re-enlisted in the reserves prior to WW2, and when that conflict began he found himself at Dunkirk, where he was wounded […]
Helmut Lemke was born February 3, 1926 in a village in East Prussia. His father was a Great War veteran who had served as a medic on the eastern front, and he never recovered from the shellshock and horrors of that war, taking his life when Helmut was just 13. Helmut grew up alongside his […]
Justin Roy was born August 19, 1924; he grew up in M’Chigeeng First Nation, an Ojibwe band government in the Manitoulin District of Ontario. He attended the Jesuit-run St. Peter Claver residential school but left at age 13 to find his own way in the world after his father passed away. He first worked at […]
Helene Le Scelleur was born November 22, 1972, and she grew up in Greenfield Park, on the South Shore of Montreal. On the second day of her last year in high school – when she was 17 – a recruiter showed an infantry regiment presentation. She stated that “she wanted to be part of something […]
Paul Vaillancourt was born October 21, 1938, in Dill Township, just outside of Subbury, Ontario. Paul’s father worked for the railroad until he was injured on the job, which put the family in difficult financial circumstances. Paul’s mother was left alone with their seven children as he underwent multiple surgeries, and the stress of that […]
Gordon Finnie was born March 2, 1931 in Toronto, where he grew up in the Parkdale neighbourhood. Gord grew up during the tough times of the Great Depression and the Second World War, and he and his brothers delivered newspapers to help the family out. His parents worked at the Palace Theatre on the Danforth. […]
Richard James Earl was born July 3, 1924 in Winnipeg. He was the youngest of six brothers and three sisters – in a family that covered a wide range of ages. His father was a tailor who made uniforms for Canadian National Railroad employees, particularly the porters, conductors and dining car staff. He had served […]
Henry Kolinek was born July 28, 1925 in Green, Texas, a small community near San Antonio. His father had been a WWI infantry veteran and during the Depression he ginned cotton and did some carpentry – anything to support the family. Henry attended a local 3-room school and for fun he went squirrel hunting with […]
John Cross was born June 21, 1925 in London, England. His father was a Great War veteran who had served with the Royal Horse Artillery and his mother was a gardener. He grew up in London against the backdrop of the Great Depression and emerging military tensions of the 1930s. John in fact recalls the […]
Ed Marshall was born December 18, 1923 in Toronto, Ontario, where he grew up in the city’s east end. His father and grandfather were veterans of the Great War, and both had served as bakers in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Ed’s early life was set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, so while he […]
Art Cameron was born September 29, 1939 in St. Peter’s Bay, P.E.I. He grew up there against the backdrop of the Second World War, living on a mixed farm in Head of Hillsborough with his numerous siblings and attending the College at Prince of Wales in Charlottetown. He remembers the 1950s as a period of […]
Scott Maclagan was born in Toronto in 1939, and that is where he spent his early life, growing up against the backdrop of the Second World War. The family relocated to the Beaverton area in 1948, and Scott initially attended a one room schoolhouse before going to high school in Orillia, where he remembers being […]
John Preece was born October 19, 1926 in Toronto’s Queen-Bathurst neighbourhood. John’s early life was not easy, largely because of family circumstances. His mother had emigrated from Scotland, and – alone in Toronto – she fell into a relationship with a married man and turned to alcohol. John does not have many positive memories of […]
Richard Hough was born in Napanee, Ontario, where he grew up on a dairy farm. He wanted to be a pilot, and that led him to join the Canadian Forces; while his dream of pilot did not work out, he did qualify as a navigator, and he set off to RMC to study engineering. He […]