Swift Current Museum unveils new banners to honour veterans
Steven Stanley Senyk was born on March 5, 1919 to Joseph and Dora Senyk in Swift Current. He was the third of six children. Bill and Anne were his older siblings and Mike, Rose and Joyce joined the family after him.
Steve attended school at Oman and Swift Current Collegiate Institute. He was a member of St. Stephen’s Anglican Church, where there is a plaque to his memory.
He went to British Columbia in 1939 to visit his older siblings and he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy at Esquimalt on Aug. 7, before the outbreak of the Second World War. His ship went to Hawaii in 1939, but he returned home on leave for Christmas that year, which was the last time he saw his family.
In May 1940 he was transferred to the HMCS Fraser, an escort to ocean convoys sailing from Halifax, where he served as a 2/C stoker. The Fraser was tasked to join the destroyer HMCS Restigouche and cruiser HMS Calcutta on Operation Ariel to rescue 4,000 refugees trapped by the Germans on the coast of Bordeaux, France. The three ships were lining up to return to England after the successful evacuation of St. Jean de Luz, but the Fraser collided with the Calcutta in rough seas and during poor visibility. The Fraser split into three pieces and lost 47 of its 181 sailors in the Gironde estuary on June 25, 1940.
Steven Senyk, at age 21, was one of those lost in Canada’s first naval disaster of the Second World War. He is remembered on the Halifax Memorial in Nova Scotia and in the hearts of his two surviving sisters and six nieces and their families.
Wallace M “Wally” Shirley:
He was born in Swift Current to Alma and Oscar Shirley on Feb. 19, 1926. Oscar was a grain buyer and the family moved around southwest Saskatchewan. Wally went to school primarily in Scotsguard, but also lived in Admiral and Beverley.
He joined the Royal Canadian Navy in 1943 when he was seventeen-and-ahalf years old and trained at the Naval Training Base in Regina. He served as an electrician on the HMS Jamaica and later the HMCS Ontario, which were cruisers.
He was part of a trip by the HMS Jamaica to take supplies from England through the Irish Sea and the Norwegian Sea to Spitzbergen while crossing the Arctic Circle. Thereafter the ship returned to the Scapa Flow base on Scotland’s north coast, and then carried out convoy duty to Iceland on a route
mainly above the Arctic Circle.
After a brief leave back home, he was posted to HMCS Ontario. There were five people on the ship from Swift Current. He was part of the ship’s first and only war-time crew in 1945, because the war ended while he was on board. The ship’s extensive route during this period included sailing through the Suez Canal to the Indian Ocean.
It was the first ship to pass through the Straits of Malacca between Sumatra and Malaysia after the war ended with the surrender of Japan in August 1945. The ship then went to Hong Kong and spend four months in the harbour for security, because there were Japanese prisoners in the city.
Thereafter the ship travelled via Manilla to Guam, Hawaii, and then finally docked at Esquimalt on Vancouver Island. Wally was discharged on Jan. 30, 1946 at the HMCS Queen naval base in Regina and returned to Swift Current where he married Ellen Aitken on April 3, 1946. They had six children. He began working with Canada Post in 1947 as a letter carrier. He eventually became the postal officer supervisor and he remained with Canada Post for 38 years.
He was a lifetime Legion member. Wally and Ellen moved to Prairie Pioneers Independent Living in Swift Current in 2010. He passed away on May 19, 2015 at the age of 89.
Sgt. Eldon Sidney Stewardson:
He lived in Saskatchewan in a family of one brother and sister, two half-brothers and one half-sister in Shauvavon,
Davidson, Regina, Swift Current, and Prince Albert. He enlisted at Dundurn and was placed in the 16/22 Saskatchewan Horse at that time. His brother recalls that the 16/22 was based in Swift Current at the time he enlisted.
Eldon had spent time with the militia in Swift Current before the Second World War. He was sent to basic training after enlisting and somewhere along the line he was transferred to another unit and earned his sergeant stripes.
He went overseas and was transferred to Europe after D-Day and served in a front-line unit. He was transferred to a British Army tank battalion.
Eldon was killed in Belgium on Nov. 1, 1944 while with that British battalion, and he is buried at New Oostende Cemetery in Belgium as the only member of the Canadian Army in that cemetery. Stewardson Lake, located north of Cree Lake in Saskatchewan, is named after Eldon.