Pictures of Poppie

(Poppie is the first person on the left)

On Wednesday I did a post on my Poppy and his experiences during WWII. You asked for me to post the pictures that with the stories and today I am happy to be able to oblige you. Here is a quote from my post, followed by a picture.

"My grandfather served in WWII as a airplane mechanic in the Royal Canadian Air Force. We have pictures of his time during the services, of the great planes that he worked on and the time he spent overseas. One of my favorites was a picture of him, standing tall and handsome in a pair of overalls in front of a downed bomber in a snowy field. We liked to tease that it was "the plane Poppie fixed". It was said in jest of course, he could fix just about anything, though it might be held together with some blasting wire and a few blobs of sauter. A great man for sautering, my Pop's was!"

"The plane that Poppie fixed!" (Poppie is facing the camera on the right)

"I also loved an old black and white snapshot that my Poppie took while kneeling on the shoulders of his friend and looking out over a crowd in a square in England. A sea of people stood, shoulder to shoulder, gathered to listen to Churchill speak in person and address the end of the war. Poppie said that, though there were literally thousands of people, you could hear a pin drop."

Below are some of my favorite old pictures of my grandparents. To me, they capture the romance and glamor of a lost era.

Poppie is on the far left and my grandmother is in the middle.

Poppie on far left, Granny next to him in the middle beside my Great Aunt and Great Uncle (Poppie's brother)

My Granny catching a train in Vancouver to visit my Poppie while he was stationed in Ottawa, Canada around 1944.

Granny and Poppie

My great-grandfather went to the prairies of Saskatchewan to start up as a farmer twice after immigrating from Canada from Scotland. Both times the crops failed and he was forced to move back to the city (Vancouver). He still dreamed of becoming a farmer (I assume that is where I get it from) and tried to convince my great grandmother to move back with him one last time. She told him that he was welcome to go, but that she was staying put! He chose his wife over farming but he did put their acre lot in the middle of the city to use grown vegetables and even raised chickens for eggs that my Poppie sold around the neighborhood, Above is a picture of Poppie's brother with his father in the prairies in 1914. Below is a picture of the great teams of draft horses they used at harvest.