An Interview with George Crewe, RCN

For Posterity's Sake

A Royal Canadian Navy Historical Project

An Interview with George Crewe, Telegraphist, RCN

Background information on George Crewe

© Anne Gafiuk 2012

Website - What's in a story by Anne Gafiuk

Monday, April 12, 2012 W. George Crewe General Delivery Jaffray, British Columbia VOB 1T0

Background Information

I will be 89 this year on November 4th. (2012) I was born in 1922.

I've been in the Baynes Lake/Jaffray area of BC since 1993. I was in Fernie from 1970 until 1993. And previously, I was from Lethbridge, where I was born.

Jock Palmer - this goes back, many, many years. I am sure he lived in Lethbridge. Parts of his plane was buried in a garage on 7th Avenue and 12th Street A, I'd say...maybe....

I remember this kid when I was going to Fleetwood School when I was there from Grade 3 to Grade 8...he lived close to this house.....this kid knew all about it. One day we snuck into the garage and we lifted the floor boards as they were loose. There were parts of the plane buried or hidden underneath there...it was supposed to be Jock Palmer's plane.

I have no proof of this....this would be in the early 1930's.....I don't think Jock lived there....it was someone else's garage.

Jock Palmer's name came to me in a flash! I don't remember anything else! That is all I remember about it. Planes were interesting but not like anything else, like the Navy - the Navy was it!

Even though I wanted to join the Fleet Air Arm, there was the Navy involved. When I was a young boy, there was a company called the B/A Oil Company and every week or two weeks, maybe, they came out with a pamphlet. It was all about flying. There was a service station on the North Side and I knew him quite well. I used to go over there and he would give me one of these pamphlets. And maybe that is what got me interested into the airplane part of it.

But that book I got when I was ten, it had pictures of ships, battle ships, and guys over the side painting. Maybe I could combine the two....ships and planes. That might have been in the back of my mind...I guess; holy cow...that was so long ago.

I loved hockey. I played in Lethbridge in the Pee Wees, of course. Oh, yeah. I was on the first team. This was in 1935, I guess. There were had two teams in Lethbridge and we played every Sunday afternoon in the arena and we packed that arena!

I played a pretty good game. I won the scoring championship twice when I was a kid and I got a trophy. I think it is in the storage. I won the Lady Byng Trophy for the most gentlemanly player. My first coach, I'll never forget. I used to argue....he wanted me to be rougher; he used to give me heck. I said, "You don't score goals from the penalty box!" That ended that...he saw the light. I got to keep the trophy for a year.

About the same time, the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Chicago Blackhawks came through Lethbridge on their way to Nelson to play an exhibition game after the season. They came by train. A good 60% of Lethbridge was out there. I got the Toronto Maple Leafs' autographs! They didn't get off the train. They stood at the back of the train. I bought this autograph book - George takes out an autograph book from his desk - 1934-35.....Pop Kelly, Dick Irvin - the announcer's dad, Charlie Connacher - he had the hardest shot in the NHL at the time....Bill Thomas, Red Horner - he was a defenseman...he was a tough guy - Happy Day - King Clancey...Joe Primeau and Art Jackson....the other guys were from Chicago. They were there at the same time!

I was superstitious since I can remember. Even when I played hockey....on Sundays, when I went to the arena, I would never let my dad take me to the arena. I walked. When we played hockey on Sunday afternoon, I walked. It was just me....Dad was okay with that. They would come to the arena and watch the game and then drive me home.

I carried my bag, but all we had in those days, all you had was your skates, a stick and your gloves. Liberty magazine was the right size for shin pads....for me. I used to put them inside the sock and they would go just below the knee. The gloves that I had were my mother's...they weren't padded. In the museum in Lethbridge, I took some pictures into them of the first hockey teams....The Americans and The Canadians. They were replicas of their uniforms. We had their names on our backs. I represented Johnny Gagnon. Pete Lapine, was the left winger. Howie Meretz was the centre.

I hated school with a passion. I thought, "This is the way to get out of it." I finished Grade 10 and part of Grade 11. When I got my results for my Grade 10, I put them away and I didn't show them to my mom or my dad until I got out of Navy seven years later.

I guess I might have been bored at school. I was kept back in Grade 3. But after that, school was a breeze. All I was interested in was sports, track and field, what have you.

My mother said to me one day, "I could never understand why you joined the Navy so young."

I went into my dresser drawer and said, "Read that!" <laughter>

My mother came from Scarborough...a seaside town in England. She knew about the Navy.

My father was in the Canadian Army. He never discussed the war with me. He talked more with my sister after I joined the Navy, but she never told me much, even though we were quite close. I didn't seem to ask questions, either.

He was British. He came over to Canada when he was very young, looking for work. As far as I could determine, about two years before WWI started....he came over. My mother came after the war in 1919....they met over there. She came after.

I assume it didn't bother her to any great degree that we had a problem with the war.

My mother was a real city girl. She had no conception of what was going on on the Prairies. There are a couple of stories I snicker at.

My father loved to garden and he had a little garden. (I like to garden, too, spinach, peas, lettuce...I tried Swiss Chard here behind our building. I am going to try leeks.)

He came home for lunch one day and she had some really nice potatoes on the table. He looked at her. "Where did you get the new potatoes?"

"Oh," she says, "I went out to the garden and dug around and picked out the potatoes I wanted, but I put the other ones back, so they could grow."

Another story: on a very clear day, you can see the mountains in Lethbridge. They look quite close. Every day, my father had a little sleep after lunch, even after work. He would lie down for fifteen minutes and go back to work at 1 pm. This one Sunday, she says, "I am going to go for a walk. I think I am going to walk over to the mountains."

He says, "Okay. Go ahead. I'll have a sleep." <laughs>

She got to the coulees...that ended it; and she didn't know the coulees were that close and the mountains were 60-70 miles away.

My father was a parts manager for an automotive garage in Lethbridge. My mother was at home. She was strictly at home. Those days, wives didn't work.

She took me back to England when I was a year and a half old to see her folks and my dad's folks. She never went back until 1953 or 1954, she went for a trip. Then she went once more after Dad died in 1957.

They stayed in Lethbridge....they were there forever. She really liked it. She was involved with the IODE and things like that. Lethbridge in those days, was 6,000 - 8,000 people. You practically knew everybody.

My sister was born in 1926. She passed away a couple of years ago. She lived in Lethbridge for awhile and then she and her husband, a jeweller, moved to Red Deer and then they moved to California.....Indio, near Palm Springs. Then they went to Susanville. He had his own store at that time. They more or less stayed there. She stayed in the States for the rest of her life. I visited her a couple of times, but she never came back. I always maintained that when they moved down there....my brother in law had dual citizenship. She was afraid that if she came up, she would never get back in. Whether that is true or not, but she never told me. She might not have had all the paper work. Only two or three years before she passed away, she got her American Citizenship. I gave her heck for that!

This is a true ship's clock. My wife bought it for me in Victoria in 1985 or 1990. There is a marine shop there. The Warrior thing I picked it up...when were in Jamaica. Some guy came on board and he had them painted and all made up. I mounted the clock and the picture on the wood.

A ship's clock is totally different. In the Navy, there are three watches. Noon - Four; Four to Eight; Eight to Twelve. Between 4 and 6 and 6 and 8, they call those Dog Watches...they are two hour watches. They have them that way so you are not on the same watch all the time and they alternate. At 12:30, it chimes once.....at 1:00: 2 chimes; 1:30: 3; 2:00: 4; 2:30: 5; 3:00: 6; 3:30: 7; 4:00:8. Then it starts all over again. And then again at 8:30.

I've had this clock roughly over 15 years, so I thought I had better get it cleaned. I gave it to a jeweller. I wrote everything down on a piece of paper about its chimes. I waited and waited and I waited....roughly 18 months later, I got it back...and I was furious. The bill was astronomical! He charged me $900! I didn't pay it!

When he delivered it back to me and I saw the bill, I said, <George claps his hands together once> "Did you remember what I told you I wanted?" I had my slip and he had his slip of paper. "I wanted it cleaned and oiled. Here is the slip." Anyway, the guy had to send it to someone else in High River or Okotoks what was supposed to be a good guy and the guy had charged him $450 and he doubled it to $900. I was annoyed and he wrote the whole thing off. BUT: then he left and I had it going. I was sitting here and I realized it wasn't chiming right. It chimes at 1:00 up to about 2:00, but then at 3:30 and 4:00 it is not chiming properly. This happened in March 2011 when I got it back. I don't think I will see that guy back. I was upset because it was a gift from my wife. I am debating what to do. Today, try to get a watch repaired. It doesn't matter what you buy...disposable society.

I had an interest in radio when I was a boy. I started to take a correspondence course from the Radio College of Canada, but I never did finish it because the Navy came along. I knew a little bit about radio, but not Morse Code.

My daughter and I hiked the West Coast Trail twice. Well, let me see: about in 1980 and 1986. It was really rough. There was one suspension bridge, wasn't there? We did it the other way - Port Renfrew to Bamfield. <clock chimes> We stayed in Port Alberni and then we took a taxi...it wasn't too bad - to Parksville and caught the train. That was a round about trip. That trip, yes, we had pretty good weather. The second one, though, we had rain like you wouldn't believe. I wanted to do it a third time, but I have given that up now. Well, the first time, there were two fellows from Lethbridge, Catherine and myself. We were good friends. We used to go fishing. He just couldn't make it. We had to leave him quite close to the lighthouse. It was about 3 or 4 days. They got a hold of the people who patrol and brought him out.

The day that we ran into a lady, she was going the opposite direction and she had nothing...nothing...no sleeping bag...nothing. She told us where she was from. We hadn't left her more than half an hour...we told them about her...this is how she is dressed...and she is alone. They looked after her. When we got back to Victoria, we phoned and she was home. People are foolish....when Catherine and I went alone....we stopped at the first night. I can't remember where that is now. We put up our tent, had dinner and hoisted our things up into the tree. People asked us: "What are you doing that for?" We told them there are mice and all kinds of critters around here - bears....get it up and out of the road so they won't get at it. They didn't believe us. The mice got into their things...droppings...it was their first day out! We didn't worry about them.

We saw cougar tracks. I enjoyed the hike, I really did. I just gave my hiking boots away at someone at Baynes who was my size. The only hike they've been on is the West Coast Trail.

The funny thing is, there is a lady in Lethbridge who I was in Grade 3 - 8 with and I knew her parents really well, and my parents knew them, too. She was in Toronto two years ago and visited another young lady - woman down there....in Whidby, who I took quite an interest in when I found out that girls were kinda nice! <smile> And this one day - since I got here, by the way, I got this phone call.

"George?"

"Yes."

"This is Amy. Amy McMillan. Do you remember me?"

"Yes, I do." I was sweet on her.

We phone every week now. She is about a year younger than I am. She is widowed and had a severe stroke. I talked with her just yesterday - she was going to let me know about something on her leg that is not healing. We just keep in touch.

I cut it off with her because I didn't want anything to get too serious. I didn't discuss it with her. I made the decision. Game over.

Then she joined the Air Force. She was in Vulcan. I do not know where else she went. She married a chap from Lethbridge. Then they moved to Ontario. She had three children - one was disabled, possibly Cerebral Palsy, and that is where they could get help and they moved there.

I've been arguing with Veteran's Affairs for years. I won't get compensation....there was nothing indicated on my medical records....there wasn't anyone to write it down. The witnesses are dead now. I was only in contact with one chap from the ship after we left and he passed away about a year ago. I went to two hearings and had two appeals. It was like talking to that wall. I was very annoyed. The people were not even born when the war was on. They do not understand. I would like to access the Veterans Independence Programme, but since I am not getting a pension I do not qualify. I don't get a pension because I was only in for seven years and you would have to stay in for 25 years. Now if you had something wrong with you, you could get a pension....like a hearing problem. They tested me, but I said, "You are wasting your time!" Because of my radio. I still get on the radio two or three times a week and I read Morse Code. I want to keep my brain in action. That was why I went back into radio after I got out of the Navy.

If I would have had a hearing problem, they would cover my glasses. Once you get anything, then boy, you are set. They pay for glasses, prescriptions.....it's a bundle! I could have lied, but I didn't.

That's the way it is. I wasn't asking for much. I went back for a review. I had to go to Nelson, BC. I went over there the first time myself. They paid my bill: hotel and gas. I got a cheque for $400. The appeal: they gave me permission to bring a person because I couldn't drive that way in one day. They paid for his meals and accommodation and my gas. The cheque came back to me for $600.00. That was their way of doing things.

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