HAND-BUILT HOUSES AND EVACUEE LIFE ABROAD
Reader remembers good times as a young boy overseas
WHEN Dan Harris went to Canada in 2006, it was an emotional return visit. As an eight-year-old boy, Dan was sent to Hamilton, Ontario, one of 2664 young people evacuated as part of the “CORBy” scheme – Children’s Overseas Reception Board – during the Second World War.
Our recent feature about Don McDonald, whose wife’s grandmother had also left Scotland for Ontario albeit in very different circumstances, prompted Dan to share some of his memories of the area.
“Having lived on the outskirts of Hamilton, Ontario, for four years during the Second World War, I was very interested in reader Don McDonald’s story,” says Dan, who grew up in Maryhill and now lives in East Kilbride.
“I was evacuated to the outskirts of Hamilton in August 1940, aged eight, to live with my mother’s sister, Anne, and her two young children.
“Her husband was over here with the Canadian Army. Anne had emigrated on her own in 1926, and subsequently met and married Andy.”
The CORBy scheme, during a critical period of the war, was intended as a “temporary exile” for British children, as fears grew of a German invasion.
They were sent, mainly, to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, and some to the US.
The scheme came to an abrupt end when the evacuation ship SS City of Benares, carrying 90 children bound for homes in Canada, was torpedoed and sank. Many people, including 77 of the 90 CORB children, died in the tragedy.
Despite occasional bouts of homesickness, Dan has many fond memories of staying with his cousins, Helen and Jimmy, and he vividly remembers the area where he stayed with the family.
He adds: “I found Hamilton to be very unlike Hamilton, Scotland, a steelworks town.
“The steelworks there were located next to the bay and in my opinion, unless you lived near them, you would not be aware this was a steeltown.
“Unlike the lady in Don’s story who, with her Canadian husband, bought a house, my aunt and her husband built their own house, just like the vast majority of the families living in the area did in those days.
“Land was cheap. The building and planning regulations were very slack.
“No two houses looked alike. The majority of them were wooden structures. Some looked like brick from a distance.
“Weatherproof sheets covered with what looked like bricks were nailed to, and wrapped around, the wooden structure.”
Dan also recalls a Polish man building his family home in the evenings and weekends, while his family lived in a large tent. “We had a running water supply, but only because we lived across the road from an airport,” he says. “All the other households in that area drilled a hole in the ground for a hand pump to be used. There were no sewerage pipes. Our house used a bucket in a shed.” Dan smiles: “Guess who dug the hole to empty the contents of the bucket?” Dan was invited back to Canada in 2006, as a guest speaker at the closing ceremony of the school he had attended while an evacuee in Canada.
“I met up with friends I’d made in 1944,” he says.
“And I was delighted to see that most of the houses which were hand built all those years ago, were still standing.”
Were you evacuated abroad as part of the CORBy scheme? Get in touch with Times Past to share your stories.