I remember VE Day, May 8, 1945. I was at school in Toronto, and classes were dismissed.
We ran down the hallway, a wide corridor with big pictures hanging on the walls. We set the pictures swinging. We were stopped before any damage was done.
This was a day of celebration, not a time for destruction. I think we were gathered in the main hall and then sent home.
Other memories of the season were that rationing came to an end: meat and sugar and gasoline. I delighted to find a bar of dark chocolate, Rowntree’s Plain York. My mother opened the tinned ham which she had kept for several years. It was still as good as new. Teenage memories of distant past, remembered vaguely two weeks ago.
It was VE Day, Victory in Europe Day, the end of the fighting in Europe, and the prospect that the 59th and 166th Artillery Regiments and other soldiers, sailors, airmen and women would come home.
It could also be remembered as VA Day, Victory in the Atlantic Day, which must have been a particularly joyous day for Newfoundland — no more submarines.
In Halifax it was Disaster Day, the day of rioting, when the sailors and the civilians outdid each other in destruction. Admiral Murray, who had commanded the Navy, first in St. John’s, then in Halifax, was dismissed and driven from the country.
Winston Churchill commented that his greatest anxiety in the war was the Battle of the Atlantic, the battle to keep the shipping lanes from North America to Great Britain open. That was the Navy’s battle, the Royal Canadian Navy’s battle, with the RCAF, fought by sailors and airmen from Revelstoke and Winnipeg and St. Albans.
Admiral Murray’s sailors had fought Admiral Doenitz’s U-boats, and Doenitz lost.
In normal times the first Sunday in May is celebrated as Battle of the Atlantic Sunday, and Cmdr. Alan Brown of HMCS Cabot had planned a parade and other ceremonies to commemorate the day.
COVID-19 has intervened, and we have a worldwide crisis which can be likened to a war. Chocolate bars are available, and gasoline is cheap, but we have to do what we are told — Stay home and wash your hands!
We should remember VE Day
Ian S. Wishart
St. John’s