A page from Donald Bennett’s scrapbook. The top photo is GGFG of Ottawa return from overseas. In the photo is Sgt. Percy H. Blackmore (formerly of Cobden, back row, second from right). The four photos in the centre from left: Sgt. Pilot Harold Cotnam who arrived in Great Britain and then who lost his life in a flying accident in Britain, Driver Wesley C. Davidson who died Aug. 21, 1944 from wounds received in action and Sgt. Pilot Irwin James Eady who was killed in action. The bottom photo on the left is Flying Officer John Irwin Labow who died on March 31, 1944. (Note…the bottom photo has nothing to do with the story.)
by CONNIE TABBERT
Edior
Foresters Falls
Aug. 20/44
Dear Son, I received your letter yesterday. I was so glad to hear from you and that you were well as we are fine here. But not like you we can sleep no guns to bother us. When you come home, I will have time to get you up if a thunderstorm comes up in the nights.
We have some more very warm weather. Things are starting to dry up in the barn, but we had a little rain and it got cooler. We have the grains all cut, if we can get a mill to thrash now. We have the promise of one for the end of the week, but you never know until you see it coming in the gate.
Wes, I will show you how to put up an electric fence. Your dad and I put one up yesterday across the field below the barn, that is something you never done, here anyway. The cows don’t like it very well.
Have to start and cut the clover again. Orin and Muriel are all well.
They sure have a busy time. They are going to have a nice barn. They are boarding it in now. It is a bank you know. They will have a nice place when they get it fixed up.
Bob Harper is living alone so I don’t think he has any girl yet to marry. Irene and Jack came down today. Irene is staying down this week. Jack is at Petawawa. Yet Keith was away at summer school. She has just got home. At last she was to be through the middle of August.
I guess you are not going to get the box I sent in May. I sent the one you got in June. I sent you cigarettes in July, also this month I got your box away, but it is so long before you get them.
Joe Harper is away west. Lena is staying at Leanard Farnell’s till he comes back. Harry and Edwin Galbraith are in France, you might see them.
Monday we had a storm. Last night too, not very bad. I was up but left the rest in bed. It was quite dull today with odd showers.
Your dad is sorting out some lumber to take down to Orin. He is buying it. Got to take it down to him. Orin is still working in the mine, if he would try and do one thing at a time, it would be better for all.
Emil Zadow Is better again and back at work.
Irwin Harrison is discharged from the army. He had those large veins in his legs, couldn’t stand it.
Well, I will have to say Cheerio.
God bless you Wes and heaps of love
Mother and Dad
WESTMEATH — Doreen Mackay decided it was time to declutter and one of the things she was getting rid of was a treadle sewing machine. How long she had it, she does not know.
“I was using it as a flower holder,” she said.
It was in the porch and it was in good shape, she added.
A woman who comes to her home to help her clean, told Ms. Mackay she’d like to have the sewing machine since she was getting rid of it.
In early summer, before giving it away, Ms. Mackay decided she should go through the drawers that were part of the sewing machine.
“I wanted to check and see if there was anything in it,” she said.
Ms. Mackay had the machine for a long time. She and husband Russel moved to the farm on Lookout Road from Toronto.
“We’ve lived her for 40 years and it was time to downsize,” she said.
Going through the drawers, she said, “I found a letter. I read it and thought, I can’t throw this out.”
Ms. Mackay does not know who the people are from whom she purchased the sewing machine. But, the letter, she said, “It’s a part of history from our area.”
Ms. Mackay said her son Shane took the letter to Donald Bennett in Foresters Falls, who filled him in on the family, who lived on Fletcher Road, formerly known as the Beachburg/Ross Townline.
Mr. Bennett told Whitewater News that Wesley Davidson was the son of Bob and Bella Davidson. He died of wounds he received in action on Aug. 22, 1944.
“They lived next door to us growing up,” he said. “I was eight or nine when he enlisted.”
However, Wesley didn’t have to go to war. He was in his 30s, and so wouldn’t have been enlisted, Mr. Bennett said.
“He and his friend joined and neither of them came back,” he said, adding, “I can’t remember his friend’s name.
“They wouldn’t have been called up,” he said. “They would have been alive, because they were too old to be called up.”
Wes had a brother Ernie, who was a barber in Beachburg; his sisters all married: Ruby married Gordon Condie; Muriel married Orin Waite; Irene married Jack Fraser and Kathleen married Wesley Quinn.
Most families throughout the area were affected by the war, Mr. Bennett said, noting his uncle, Willy Blackmore, who was raised in Meath Hill, was one of the casualties. Percy Blackmore, who died about a year ago, was another uncle and brother to Willy, who was also a veteran. Their brother Herby is 96 years old and lives in Lindsay.
Irwin James Eady, a brother to Archie Eady who died about a year ago, was killed in action.
Harold Clinton Cotnam died in a flying accident in Britain.
John Irwin Labow went missing in action in March 1944 and declared dead on March 31, 1944. He is buried in Durnbach War Cemetery in Germany. He was the uncle of Jim Labow, the owner of Beach-West Pharmacy in Beachburg.
