Museum salutes Canadian navy

Keith Anderson/The Daily News

Kamloops Naval Veterans Association members, from left, Terry McCormick, Joe Gatien, Walter Frymire, Archie Henderson, Ken Wheat, Don Ferguson and Ray Williamson gather at the Kamloops Museum Tuesday afternoon for the launch of their 100th Anniversary Navy Marine exhibit featuring the HMSC Kamloops ship, shown middle, as part of the historical display.

A Kamloops Museum exhibit was christened Tuesday as part of ceremonies nationwide honouring the centennial of the Canadian navy.

Members of the Kamloops Naval Veterans Association, who donated a set of Second World War artifacts to establish the exhibit, gathered at the museum for the occasion.

“We don’t normally think of Kamloops having a whole lot to do with the navy,” said museum manager Elisabeth Duckworth. “Yet we have quite a long legacy of naval connections.”

Among the artifacts are two bells, a white ensign and a scale model of the HMCS Kamloops, a navy corvette launched in Victoria in 1940. More than 120 of the vessels were built for war service and it was navy practice to name them after Canadian towns and cities.

“It’s a great day for us,” said Archie Henderson, president of the association. “It should be a great day for Kamloops.”

Henderson’s post-war sailor’s uniform is part of the exhibit.

Both the bells and the ensign are authentic relics of the Kamloops. A nickel officer’s mess bell was donated by the people of Kamloops to the ship in 1941 and was returned to the City in 1945. A brass ship’s bell was rescued from a Toronto flea market in 1981 by Gary Lowe, a former resident.

“He drove it across the country and brought it to us,” Duckworth said.

The display, temporarily on show next to the archives until museum upgrading projects are completed this summer, is intended to attract donations of more naval artifacts.

Canadian corvettes have often been credited with winning the drawn-out Battle of the Atlantic, having shepherded countless merchant convoys. The Kamloops was part of that force, escorting convoys, the lifelines of Great Britain under siege, through waters frequented by German U-boats.

Don Ferguson was the sole Second World War vet on hand Tuesday. Describing himself as a “tail-ender” who served in the final year of the conflict, he recalled the soggy side of life at sea.

“You were wet from an hour and a half out of port until you got home,” he said. “Sometimes even inside.”

Ken Wheat, who assisted the veterans in assembling the artifacts over the years, spoke of the increasing difficulty in preserving history against profiteers cashing in on the e-Bay trend.

Like most of the 400 Canadian naval vessels of wartime service, the Kamloops was scrapped afterwards but it lives on in cinematic form. The ship was used in principal shooting for a wartime film called Corvette K225, starring Randolph Scott.

Hair-splitters may argue that the centennial holds no water because there hasn’t been a distinct Canadian naval service since unification of the Canadian Armed Forces in 1968. That controversial change, however, hasn’t erased the distinguished history of the navy in peace and in war.

Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier introduced the Naval Services Bill in 1910, the same year he visited Kamloops for what would become a historic meeting with assembled native leaders.

myouds@kamloopsnews.ca

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