{"id":15810,"date":"2016-11-16T17:35:36","date_gmt":"2016-11-16T22:35:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=15810"},"modified":"2016-11-23T18:24:30","modified_gmt":"2016-11-23T23:24:30","slug":"veterans-bring-girl-power-and-tail-fire-to-students-remembrance-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/veterans-bring-girl-power-and-tail-fire-to-students-remembrance-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Veterans bring girl power and tail fire to students\u2019 Remembrance Service"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a young woman in the 1930s, Peggy Strange was a salesgirl at the Regina Simpsons store.
\nDespite the Prairies\u2019 \u201cDirty Thirties\u201d it was a relatively prosperous store with five sales girls and a larger staff complement to serve customers.
\nThen, Canada joined the Second World War and her life, along with the lives of countless others changed.
\n\u201cWhen the war broke out people weren\u2019t buying anything,\u201d says the Aurora resident, who celebrated her 99th birthday earlier this month. \u201cWe were just hanging around. The head lady said to us one day, \u2018I would like to talk to you girls this afternoon,\u2019 and she told us we were all finished.\u201d
\nUndaunted, she and her fellow salesgirls went to a nearby caf\u00e9 for a 25 cent fish and chip lunch to plan their next course of action.
\n\u201c\u2019I can\u2019t go home,\u2019 I said to myself because I don\u2019t want to be a burden on my folks, and it was the same for the other girls,\u201d Mrs. Strange recalls. \u201cWe decided to join the war effort. We went down, signed up, and we came to Toronto where we bought our uniforms, learned how to salute and everything else. When we got there, we decided what we were going to be.\u201d
\nIn those days, options for young women were limited. Outside the typical nursing roles, the opportunities given to Peggy (Born Frances McClelland) and her friends were limited to being mess women, cooks, cleaners, stenographers and equipment assistants. With only one girl in their group proficient with typing, the rest of them dodged the steno pool and took the last option, where she became a Sergeant in the Women\u2019s Division of the RCAF, working at what is now CFB Rockcliffe in Ottawa.
\nMrs. Strange, a resident of Hollandview Trail Retirement Community, was one of three veterans who came to Rick Hansen Public School on Friday for the school\u2019s Remembrance Day Service.
\nShe was joined by 91-year-old Seaman First Class Jack Crone, and Second Class Warrant Officer (RCAF) Stan Bray, \u201c92-and-a-half\u201d to interact with students.
\nOur veterans of the past were joined by currently serving Sergeant Carl Coney of the RCAF.
\n\u201cFreedoms and rights are gifts that Canadians open every day,\u201d said a group of Grade 8 students leading the service. \u201cThe students, staff, family and community of Rick Hansen Public School would like to extend our gratefulness and gratitude to our honoured guests for their service to our great company. We would like to say thank you for protecting us, thank you for protecting our rights and freedoms, and thank you for protecting those around the world in need of our help. Your presence here today has reinforced the reason Remembrance Day should be important to all Canadians. We will never forget.\u201d
\nParticipating in Friday\u2019s service was an emotional first for Mr. Bray, who served in Canada\u2019s reserves for two years before enlisting to be a pilot on March 18, 1942.
\n\u201cEach year for the last 70 years, I would sit home all by myself and watch the ceremonies from television, and I would always shed a few tears,\u201d said Mr. Bray ahead of the service. \u201cI am very impressed by this.\u201d
\nLike Mrs. Strange, Mr. Bray has close ties with CFB Rockcliffe, often going to the base during his youth in the 1930s to watch the planes take off. It was a formative experience, he said, and it inspired him to pursue a career in the air \u201clike everybody else.\u201d
\n\u201cIt was the thing to do,\u201d said Mr. Bray, wearing his long bar of medals including his Pacific Star. \u201cI wanted to be a pilot like everyone else when I was a kid. Billy Bishop was still flying them.\u201d
\nJoining the air force, he underwent aptitude tests and his superiors found out he learned Morse Code in the Boy Scouts, he was made a wireless operator in a squadron based on the west coast, operating out of a Lockheed Ventura. From there, he was bound for the United Kingdom, serving in Buckinghamshire coordinating transports to take supplies for Canadian forces serving in The Netherlands.
\n\u201cMy buddies,\u201d said Mr. Bray when asked what goes through his mind each November 11. \u201cI lost three neighbours, one in Hong Kong. Canada sent a regiment over to Hong Kong and never got out of it. Another one of my buddies was a Tail End Charlie on a Lancaster and he was killed by a German fighter plane. Another was also a tail gunner. I had a cousin who was captain of a Lancaster. He was 20 years old and on a bombing run two days before the war ended. Bam! The plane blew up and seven guys were just written off.\u201d
\nMrs. Strange\u2019s experience was very different. It was a challenge at the time being a woman and doing the work she did, she said, and it was not only the work that was difficult. The women, she said, were often challenged by the men serving alongside them.
\nOpportunities for servicewomen are much greater today and Mrs. Strange said it is important for these lessons to be shared.
\n\u201cWhat a wonderful bunch of little children to sit through all this and they sat so quietly for so long,\u201d she said, giving little hand waves to the primary children thanking the veterans on their way out of the assembly. \u201cIt is wonderful the older students are taking an active part in teaching the children about the war.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a young woman in the 1930s, Peggy Strange was a salesgirl at the Regina Simpsons store.
\nDespite the Prairies\u2019 \u201cDirty Thirties\u201d it was a relatively…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/2016-11-17-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-470","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-30 18:42:52","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}