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aCanada’s Merchant Navy Young Jim Smitherman escorted convoys of ships across the Atlantic Every year, as November approaches, I reflect on recent history and the men and women who fought willingly to protect our homes and our way of life. It is also a time when I realize how grateful I should be for never having to go to strange lands and fight oppression. Jim Smitherman, a resident of Port Perry, on the other hand is a man who lived in a different era than myself and left Port Perry for the North Atlantic as a young volunteer in the Canadian Navy. Jim was born in 1924 in Mount Den- nis, a suburb of Toronto. As a young lad he attended public school and when he completed grade eight went to work in his grandfather’ 's bakery. At 15, Jim’s father, a WWI veteran moved the family to Corona- tion Gardens in Brooklin, an area reserved for military men and women. Now that the family was living in ‘the country’ Jim easily found work on farms while his father was a guard at the Ajax mu- nitions factory. The plant, and later the town, was named after the British ship which sank Germany's Graf Spee. When Jim turned 16 he found work ona lake boat, which carried railroad cargo from Cobourg to Rochester and back. Jim shov- elled coal in the stokehole and fed the four furnaces that powered the ship. This was great training for his next job, which came when he turned 17. It was 1942 and the war in Europe was raging. Jim, like most Canadians, wanted to do his part and he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy. He made his way to Toronto’s Exhibition Park, where a recruitment centre had been set up in the Automotive Building and signed up. During basic training in Halifax Jim cleaned oilers and other ship parapherna- lia while enduring the cold Atlantic winter. Please turn to page 14 Your service to Canada helped the Iife we live today. ure FOCUS - NOVEMBER 2008 15