Wartime Windsor wireless operator earns Quilt of Valour
Margaret Dunbar was a wireless operator for the Royal Canadian Air Force on Vancouver Island during the Second World War, maintaining contact with RCAF crews flying operations off the Pacific coast.
Born in Shedden, Dunbar, now 97, had moved with her family during the Great Depression to Windsor, where her father got a job at the Ford Motor Company. With the war underway, the young woman signed up for military duty. During downtime at RCAF Western Air Command headquarters at Patricia Bay during her wartime service in 1942 and ’43, Dunbar and her girlfriends would meet up with sailors on leave.
But the husband-to-be she had not yet met was not in the navy but a Windsor soldier who spent most of the war as a prisoner of the Germans, one of the hundreds of Windsor area men serving in the Essex Scottish Regiment who participated in the disastrous Dieppe Raid.
John Dunbar and Margaret met in Windsor at a postwar retraining school. They would marry, spend years in sales and retail and raise a family.
On Saturday, Margaret was at her son Mike’s home when she was given a Quilt of Valour, a colourful and warm hand-stitched work of art, a one-of-a-kind comforter made and presented as a tangible symbol in honour and appreciation of a veteran’s service. Mike Dunbar said Margaret’s younger brother, Robert Rochemont, an RCAF pilot during the Second World War, received his Quilt of Valour last year. At that ceremony, the 93-year-old mentioned that his older sister had also served in the military.
Over the past several years, 47 Quilts of Valour, each one unique and original, have been presented to local veterans. Margaret Dunbar currently lives in a retirement home.