Merchant mariner was too young for the army
Like many other veterans, Rory MacRae was just a boy when he signed up to serve in the Second World War.
A native of Sugarloaf, Victoria County, the now 90-year-old MacRae left his home near the top of Cape Breton Island when he was 16 and signed on with the merchant marine, as he was too young to enlist in the armed forces.
During his three-year stint, the able-bodied seaman plied the dangerous waters of the North Atlantic, often in “Park” cargo ships built during Canada’s wartime emergency shipbuilding program. The initiative produced more than 400 ships, each with a cargo capacity of 10,000 tons, a volume of provisions deemed to be enough to feed 225,000 people for a week.
“I remember in 1944, I was signing off the Crescent Park in Saint John and I met Stan MacPhail (95-year-old veteran from South Bar) who was signing on,” recalled MacRae, who plans to attend Saturday’s legion sponsored Remembrance Day ceremonies at Centre 200 in Sydney.
The veteran seaman said he has noticed a recent revival in the attention paid to November 11th and he attributes it to the 2014 shooting of Corp. Nathan Cirillo, who was fatally shot while on guard duty at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Ottawa.
“When that soldier got shot in the back it woke everybody up and then they started saying we got to look after our people, we got to back these people up, we got to respect the people who passed away, we got to respect the people
that served us,” he said.
After surviving the war, MacRae found himself in Halifax on May 8, 1945 for VE (Victory in Europe) Day. However, what should have been a celebration of joy was marred by violence, vandalism and looting in both Halifax and Dartmouth.
“There was celebrating, perhaps a bit too much celebrating, and it got out of hand,” said MacRae.
“I guess I was luck because I got some foot at the base canteen which was the only place serving anything that day.”