A local Mount Forest man goes off to war, of course young and ambitious and likely naive, and returns to Canada whereupon he locks everything that has returned with him including the contents of his pockets...anything with the faintest trace of Second World War...into a homemade box.
He never discusses the war. His appearance completely changed, eyes in photos seeming to hide dark secrets that he surely doesn't discuss, he carries on...marries...labours away...
When he dies the box is opened.
Treasures unearthed. Photos...ticket stubs, regulations for soldier behaviour on days off, and a long, slightly scarred brown "stick" with tarnished ends. The less pointy end carries an insignia similar to the one below (The Royal Canadian Regiment...VRI does not in this instance stand for Vibration Response Imaging or Vacation Resorts International, as fun as those sound, but rather for the reigning Victoria and the Royal Canadian Regiment).
After a little research it was ascertained that "the pointy stick" is a "drill cane". "The drill cane can ... be used in lieu of a band mace for Light Infantry and Rifle Regiments." Officer Cadet Jeffrey Ng on www.cadet-world.com The musical aspect of this makes even greater sense when knowing that the soldier in question's father was a musician and likely so was he?
Oh the pieces of the puzzle...so much harder to simultaneously condense and build when you haven't the picture on the box staring up at you...
Canes...and what of canners?
Two jars with glass lids kindly donated to the Archives..."Imperial Crown" with dates of 1942 and 1952 embossed into the base. And yet trying to uncover when the Diamond Flint/Dominion Glass Company stopped making the glass lids seems a piece to the puzzle we can't uncover, can't place into the grand overall image...
We find out that, as a "war effort" of rationing, metal, being so integral to the war movement, is replaced with glass lids. We uncover photos of the glass company in Montreal with its childhood labour force grim-faced in front of the massive brick chimney. But we don't find out measurements of the particular odd-heighth jars in question (and so Pauline will physically pour water into them) or glass-lid-making finality.
Canes and canners...
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