How I came to Canada

 This story was told to me by my mother many years after my father had died and it helped me to understand what sort of a man he was.

During WW11 my father was in the Wehrmacht (German Army) and one day the hill he was on was being assaulted by some American troops. The commanding officer ordered his troops to shoot the Americans as they came up the hill but my dad figured this was no more than outright murder so he refused. (He was a telegraph operator and only carried a sidearm... plus he had never shot anyone in his life.)

Dad could have been shot on the spot for this but instead, his commander decided to send him on a suicide mission the next day and let that take care of the problem.

After he was out of sight of his unit he started hiding behind every tree and in every ditch until he made his was to the edge of one of the enemy units which happened to be a Canadian company.

He immediately surrendered!

After a year in a POW camp, dad spent the rest of the war as a driver and translator for one of the officers and when the war was over he immediately applied to emigrate to North America since Germany was in ruins.

The waiting list for the States was too long so he put down our name for Canada and then got us on one of the first immigrant ships coming over here. 

On a side note: He originally wanted to go to the States because he had an uncle in Iowa, but since we went to Canada that was no longer possible.  

All in all, it's a good thing we did go to Canada because if we had ended up being American, I would have been a Canadian by about 1969 anyway! (Vietnam)

The way I see it!

The Story of Canada's $10 Bill...

If you look at the back right-hand side of a Canadian $10 bill, you will see an old veteran standing at attention near the Ottawa War Memorial. 

His name is Robert Metcalfe and he died last month at the age of 95.

 

That he managed to live to that age is rather remarkable, given what happened in the Second World War. Born in England, he was one of the 400,000 members of the British Expeditionary Force sent to the mainland where they found themselves facing the new German warfare technique - the Blitzkrieg.

He was treating a wounded comrade when he was hit in the legs by shrapnel.

 

En route to the hospital, his ambulance came under fire from a German tank, which then miraculously ceased fire. Evacuated from Dunkirk on HMS Grenade, two of the sister ships with them were sunk.

 

Recovered, he was sent to allied campaigns in North Africa and Italy. En route, his ship was chased by the German battleship, Bismarck.

In North Africa, he served under General Montgomery against the Desert Fox, Rommel.

 

Sent into the Italian campaign, he met his future wife, a lieutenant and physiotherapist in a Canadian hospital. They were married in the morning by the mayor of the Italian town, and again in the afternoon by a British padre.

 

After the war, they settled in Chatham, Ontario, where he went into politics and became the warden (chairman) of the county, and on his retirement, he and his wife moved to Ottawa. At the age of 80 he wrote a book about his experiences.

 

One day out of the blue he received a call from a government official asking him to go downtown for a photo op. He wasn't told what the photo was for, or why they chose him. 'He had no idea he would be on the bill,' his daughter said.

 

And now you know the story of the old veteran on the $10 bill.