This year marks 78 years since the Second World War ended. It was considered to be the largest and deadliest human conflict in modern history, and in many ways, a continuation of the First World War that ended in 1918.
Canada was considered a small player on the world stage at the time, but the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) and military played a vital role in the defeat over Germany and Japan during WWII. qathet resident Ted Lloyd remembers vividly serving on HMCS Uganda during the war, and the thrilling victory voyage the ship took around South America.
“The British Navy went around Africa, and we [RCN] went down to every country in South America, and back up the other side, through the Panama Canal and came up here to Powell River,” said Lloyd.
The 97-year-old veteran and eldest member of Royal Canadian Legion Branch 164 recalls that there was a photo taken at the time, of the RCN cruiser and a destroyer ship on the waters off Townsite, where the giant Hulks are now, while on its way back to Esquimalt after the South American post-war victory cruise.
Lloyd’s family moved from the Prairies to the Northern Sunshine Coast in the 1920s, and the family still lives in the region. Lloyd recalls he went to school near Stillwater, south of Powell River. His family enjoyed times together at their cabin on Palm Beach, where, for many years, Lloyd lived full time.
On February 5, 1946, HMCS Uganda sailed from Esquimalt for the South American cruise. During that deployment the ship rounded Cape Horn, west to east, "under sail," and became the first RCN ship to do so. HMCS Uganda returned to Esquimalt on May 17, 1946.
Although World War II seems distant now, at that time, the world was on the brink of Nazi Germany and its Axis powers invading and destroying countries in Europe and Asia. By the end of the war, an estimated 60 to 80 million people died, including six million Jewish people killed by Nazi Germany in the Holocaust that took place until the war ended.
A Remembrance Day service and ceremony will be held at Veteran’s Memorial Park in Townsite on Saturday, November 11.
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