About Me
On July 26, 1944, in Vancouver General Hospital, BC, I was born, a war baby. I was whelped in Minto, BC. In my meaning I was taken from my mother's breast to make way for Ron, my new baby brother, born on January 18, 1946. Brian, was born in Bralorne Hospital on February 19, 1949. Karen, our sister was also born in Bralorne on April 21, 1951.
My family moved to Minto in March, 1946, when I was 20 months old. My Dad, born in 1901, the youngest of twelve in a dirt poor Celtic Irish immigrant family, was a WW2 Commander and never married until age 42. He and his friend George Sargent's dad of the SXFN: BC First Nations | Stswecem'c Xget'tem built Dog Creek Airbase and help build the other 212 airbases, training The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP), or Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS) Canada, which trained 131,500 air personnel.
Helen Harrison-Bristol was my CFI – Chief Flight Instructor, piloted bombers from North America to England in WW2. Under a parallel agreement, she taught in the Joint Air Training Scheme, South Africa trained 33,347 aircrew for the South African Air Force and other Allied air forces.
[Later in chronology:
Mrs. Pasacreta was my Grade One teacher in my one room Minto Elementary School House. I was the only child in Grade One, located on the downriver side of the Bridge River ~ flowing from west to east.]
Our world ended the year when our mother died, in July, 1951, at age 38. We never knew we also had an older brother, Reg, until 55 years later.
In March, 1946, at aged 20 months, we moved to Minto, BC. In June, 1946 I experienced my first magnitude 7.3 earthquake. The epicentre for that M7.3 in the Forbidden Plateau Area, just north west of Courtney, BC. I was almost knocked to the ground. That would have been embarrassing, I had been walking for 16 months already.
