Veteran, 99, still mans poppy table at Bayshore
Art Boudreau signed up in September 1939, just as Canada was entering the Second World War. He left the military in 1970. Now, at 99, he’s still manning the poppy table at the Bayshore Shopping Centre.
“The beauty of sitting at the poppy table is pinning poppies on people. A lot of the guys I started out with are in the graveyard. I’m still here. I don’t know why,” said Boudreau, who has done the honours at Bayshore for about 35 years.
“Because I’m approaching 100, I get more hugs from women than you can shake a stick at.”
Boudreau enjoys meeting people, and he really likes giving back, said his son, Paul. “Kids go up to him, older people talk to him. Veterans, too.”
Boudreau is one of a shrinking number of Second World War veterans. Of the more than a million Canadians and Newfoundlanders who served, only about 41,100 remain, according to Veterans Affairs figures from March 2018.
“Luckily, I can remember a lot of things,” he said. “I remember watching the dogfights — a German plane and a British plane, and you could hear the machine-guns going. I remember a squadron of 25 Lancasters (bombers) going to Germany. When they came back, I counted 18.”
Boudreau attributes his vigorous health to good genes — and a bit to the discipline of his military background. “They didn’t mollycoddle us. When you’re in the army, you have to be tough.”
Born on his grandfather’s farm near Moncton, N.B., Boudreau was 19 when he signed up on Sept. 7, 1939, and was trained as a gunner, stationed in England. He switched to the signals section in 1943 and trained to be an artillery signaller and became a forward observation radio operator, serving in Sicily and Italy.
“I was lucky. It was a fairly safe place most of the time.”
Boudreau was in the Italian campaign from December 1943 to January 1945. When his division was sent to the Netherlands, Boudreau was sent home aboard an American liberty ship. “Five days out of New York, the war was over,” he said.
The ship landed at the docks in Brooklyn. “There were women hanging out of about 50 windows. One of the men yelled, ‘How about a date?’ And they all hollered back, ‘Yes!’ ”
Boudreau met his wife, Gladys, in Moncton just after the war.
“I was at a bus stop waiting for a bus after a hockey game with my brother,” said Gladys. “When I went to the next hockey game, he was there.”
The end of the war wasn’t the end of Boudreau’s military career. He was a signals trainer in Kingston during the Korean War and served with the peacekeeping mission on the Gaza Strip. The military life took the couple and their growing family to postings in Quebec City, Germany, Base Borden, Halifax and Winnipeg.
When Boudreau retired from the military, he worked testing electronics for Microsystems in Ottawa. In 1983, he had triple bypass surgery. Only chest pains could keep him from riding his bicycle from Bayshore to downtown and back. He still enjoys the occasional Guinness stout and bacon sandwich. He and Gladys live in the same townhouse they have occupied for 50 years. They have three children, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Boudreau’s 100th birthday in February will be marked with a party at the Legion in Bells Corners. The extended family is a musical one. While Boudreau will be honoured with song, he is expected to take the stage with his guitar and harmonica and play Anne Murray’s Snowbird and the folksong Wildwood Flower, said Paul.
“I think music is one of the secrets of his long life.” jlaucius@postmedia.com