My Father
I was born in WWII and my father was an airman in the Royal Canadian Air Force. My mother was married, but not to him, and the truth about my parentage was kept quiet by the families on all sides.
There are thousands of people of my generation, conceived in wartime, who never knew their biological fathers. I found out about my father in my forties and I traced him, with the help of friends on both sides of the Atlantic, in my sixties. He died in 2003, just a few months before I found him.
My father married an Englishwoman during the war and, after the war, they returned to Canada and raised a family. They know nothing of me, which is deliberate on my part.
One of the purposes of this visit to Canada (our second trip) was to visit the place where he last lived, and where he died, so that I could make some albeit brief connection with the father I wish I’d known.
Our visit to Vancouver Island fulfilled that wish. I’m glad we went.
