JACK WOOD SHIPS OUT
As many of you know, I grew up in a difficult household, headed by an alcoholic father who we believe was irreparably damaged by his service in the Canadian Navy during The War. Like many, he was just 17, underage when he joined — a prairie farm boy fleeing his own bleak family history in search of something better. What he discovered, lurking in the North Atlantic would change our family for generations.
When sober he would only talk about how much he hated lamb. Mutton! He would shout it referring to the only meat available aboard ship for months at a time. It would rot and stink on deck and the men hated it. Imagine enduring that smell in a hot bunk, being tossed about on the high seas and scared. We never had lamb in the house.
Occasionally, when seriously drunk, he would let slip snippets of stories about engine oil on fire atop the waves and the screams of dying men. But I was always too afraid of him to really listen. Was it gibberish? Or was it real? I don’t know because I never asked. And of that I am ashamed.
Some nights, as we cowered under our blankets, he would pace the hallways, moaning in pain from unbearable migraines and terrors connected to his service for King and Country. He died of alcoholism in ways too awful to describe here. I thought of him and his service very deeply this week as our elected officials celebrated the unthinkable.
My heart is broken for our Jewish brothers and sisters watching as our sacred House of Commons - openly celebrated an actual Nazi . After a dead giveaway in the introduction from Speaker Rota; that Yaroslav Hunka was fighting against the Russians, our clapping seals didn’t seem to know the implications of that sentance. In fact, the Russians were allies against Hitler — but all of that is forgotten in the fog of the current neocon misadventure.
Supporting Ukraine, corrupt Zelensky and even neo-Nazis in the form of the Azov Battalion, is de rigueur, because captured media and government demand it. That’s the narrative and our elected representatives are either too stupid or too corrupt to acknowledge history.
Let none of them EVER lay a wreath — or partake in ceremonies honouring those who served in the World War II because they seem to have no idea who was fighting whom.
In the UK, George Galloway nailed it.
This piece from Max Blumenthal at the Grey Zone is a must read.
Since the exposure of Hunka’s record as a Nazi collaborator – which should have been obvious as soon as the Speaker announced him – Canadian leaders (with the notable exception of Eyre) have rushed to issue superficial, face-saving apologies as withering condemnations poured in from Canadian Jewish organizations.
The incident is now a major national scandal, occupying space on the cover of Canadian papers like the Toronto Sun, which quipped, “Did Nazi That Coming.” Meanwhile, Poland’s Education Minister has announced plans to seek Hunka’s criminal extradition.
The Liberal Party has attempted to downplay the affair as an accidental blunder, with one Liberal MP urging her colleagues to “avoid politicizing this incident.” Melanie Joly, Canada’s Foreign Minister, has forced Rota’s resignation, seeking to turn the Speaker into a scapegoat for her party’s collective actions.
Trudeau, meanwhile, pointed to the “deeply embarrassing” event as a reason to “push back against Russian propaganda,” as though the Kremlin somehow smuggled an nonagenarian Nazi collaborator into parliament, then hypnotized the Prime Minister and his colleagues, Manchurian Candidate-style, into celebrating him as a hero.
Shameful. All of it. Jagmeet Singh doesn’t think #nazigate is his hill to die on. For the young Canadian men, like my father who actually served, it was the only hill. Smoothing this over, is an insult to all of them.
Meanwhile our prime minister poses and looks serious like the drama teacher he is and blames, wait for it, Russia for this absolute shit show. Next time, if we are going to elect someone unqualified to lead, can we at least choose a history teacher?
NOTE: I’ve spent my adult life not investigating my father’s service but it feels like it is time. If anyone knows how I can go about doing it — I would be so very grateful. I grew up with Remembrance Day but it’s obvious our elected officials can never be trusted to hold the histories of those serving in war time. We must do it ourselves.
Stay critical.
Everyone here seems to have some memory or another. It’s great to read them before they disappear into the bowels of time. I, too, have a memory, although a small one. Having grown up in Montreal in a Romanian Orthodox community, we had a summer camp north of the city. I would overhear the elders speaking about the ‘other’ camp, the ‘other’ church that we broke from because they were communists and supportive of Ceaușescu. Skip ahead a few years, now I am invited by a Catholic Ukrainian friend to overnight in a cabin at a Ukrainian camp in the same area. Don’t mingle she warned: this camp is full of Nazis. She tells me her father’s family are also supportive of them. Now, I’m not implying all Catholic Ukrainians are Nazis, far from it. It’s just an anecdote - a memory from 60s, but I think we forget how close the 1960s were to the atrocities of WWII, that even then, Canada was welcoming all sorts into the country with no consideration of their beliefs or ideology. My question is, did it ever change? Was there ever a time that Canada considered the politics and attitudes of our immigrants? Did we care if Chinese billionnaires flooded in, even though still ideologically tied to the Communist Part of China, with all the human rights violations tied up with it? Have we ever put our foot down?
Good morning, Trish!
I’ve been listening for a while and love your show. As a stay at home/homeschooling wife and mom of four (homeschooling 3 - 12, 14 and 17, my 22 year old is taking abstract calculus and pure maths in uni now), I appreciate your show so much, it prepares my own mind to face my teaching for the week.
I wanted to share the story of my own family’s experience with the war.
My grandfather was just 19 when he signed up to serve his country in WWII with the 3rd Army Division 69th Battalion of Light artillery anti-aircraft as a gunner. He was one of 10 children, born in Scotland and emigrated to Canada before he turned 3.
I always knew my Pappy fought in the war. I knew because when I was little, he would put me on knee and dance me about while we laughed and laughed but I noticed his hands would shake the whole time. I asked. And he told me. He never spoke much about it apart from the straight facts. Asking him what it was like was always shrugged off. Later, I found out that his battalion was one of the many who went out into the channel on that June day and landed on Juno Beach. The sole thing I ever heard him say with tears in his eyes was when he told me that those boys only said one things as they lay dying - they cried for their mothers.
He and his comrades, as you well know, were well known for their valour, their courage, their ingenuity and really known as the best you could find anywhere in the world. He marched on into Holland, liberating them and leaving a lasting legacy of great friendship between our nations and went on into, what I can only deduce, was the hardest part for Pappy - into Germany and to liberate camps.
I never heard a word about that from him. Only that it happened and he didn’t want to speak of it, ever.
He was likely a pretty broken man when he came home. Haunted by his sisters’ fiancés deaths, which he witnessed, haunted by what he saw. He had a great job at Lever Brothers down in the city and met my Nana a few years later. They would tell you that they had problems. They drank a lot. They fought a lot.
One day, while he was working, a colleague put on the radio. The Billy Graham Crusade had come to Toronto and there was a live broadcast. As he listened, something happened. He knew that he had to stop and turn around, he knew that his life was forever changed and he would follow Jesus from that moment on.
The problem : how was he to go home and tell my Nana about this? How would he be able to help her see that they had to change things?
He came home that evening and was about to tell her. But he needn’t have worried. She had listened to the same radio program while she worked that day as well and she had decided that she follow Christ from that day forward too.
Neither drank more than a sip or two again. They had a magnificent marriage. They built churches. They served the Lord every single day. They never stopped telling people what He had done for a poor broken soldier and a bitter wife.
I couldn’t begin to tell you all the people Pappy brought into his home and helped in any way he could.
I couldn’t begin to tell you what an incredible legacy he left for me.
He went home to the Lord in 2012, 25 years after Nana had gone home.
They made it so that my mother knew exactly where to turn when life got very bad. And, for her, it did. And she turned her face and the Lord shined His own upon her. She was a model for me in every way, a gentle and kind mother, full of love for us four. She served with her heart every day and I know who God is because of her example. He took her home three years after we lost Pappy.
As for me, well, my life never got to the kind of hard of war or trauma or anything like that, but I did find myself in a mess of my own making and knew exactly where to go.
I’ve been a servant for Jesus for over 20 years now. I lavish the love I have to give on my children, who get my whole mind and heart as I teach them every day.
I know you’ve heard many stories of broken men coming home from war and the devastation it has left for generations.
I felt it was important to put down in writing the legacy of our family’s brokenness and the One who healed it.
My children will know what our boys did. They will know of their heroism and courage. And they will know that healing is possible.
May God bless you, Trish.