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Courage remembered Read our special salute to veterans supplement inside today’s edition
NEWS: Website paints picture of city during WWI /A3 ARTS: Funding for filmmakers fires up CineVic /A7 SPORTS: Jr. B Cougars relinquish grip on first /A12
OAK BAYNEWS Friday, November 8, 2013
www.vicnews.com
Wartime memories of father remain for Oak Bay man Remembrance Day ceremony Monday Bill Maconachie has two distinct memories of his dad. One is from late 1943, when Bill was a toddler. He and his younger brother Ross, and their mom Margaret, were living in an Edmonton motel, as Roy, a new Royal Canadian Air Christopher Sun Force recruit, Reporting was being
trained in navigation. “I remember dad was with us when I was maybe three or four, but that’s it,” Bill said. “I remember how bloody cold it was and living in very small accommodation. I remember my mother saying it was so cold this particular winter, the gas line broke.” The second memory, when he was four, was from sometime in December 1944 or January 1945. Roy was on leave back home in Oak Bay with his young family after serving his first tour of duty.
Sharon Tiffin/News staff
Oak Bay resident Bill Maconachie stands at the Oak Bay Cenotaph on Beach Drive with a photo of his father, Roy, an aviator who died during the Second World War when Bill was very young. “He had put us in a bungalow on Gurney Street,” Bill said. “I remember mom and dad were planning on what they were going to do once the war ended.” About a month after making
those post-war plans, Roy was back in war-torn Europe, flying over the English Channel to Germany every night in a Mosquito bomber. On one of those trips in late
February 1945, Roy’s plane was shot up and had one engine rendered useless.
PLEASE SEE:
War stories, Page A11