I asked my father what object in his personal possession sparked significant memories of his life.  He chose to include the medals he received for volunteering, service and bravery during World War II.   They represent honour and bravery in his lifetime and are symbolic of fate which brought my mother and father together.  

My father was born on June 12, 1921, on Aird Island, an small island off Manitoulin Island in northern Ontario.  His father, John Ense (Ace) was from the West Bay Reserve on Manitoulin Island, and his mother, Mary McGregor, was from the Spanish River Reserve near Massey, Ontario.  The photograph on the left was taken around 1923.  My grandmother was visiting her sister, Melvina McGregor (Jordan), who had been forced to attend the St. Joseph's Residential School, along with other Indian children in the area.  The residential school system was an attempt by the Government to assimilate Indians into mainstream society, by removing all aspects of their culture and language.  Discipline in the school was extreme and harsh.  Despite her inner sadness and longing to leave the residential school, Melvina was happy to be with her sister, once again, and hold her new-born nephew in her arms.

My father was four or five years old, when this photograph was taken around 1926.  My grandmother is holding my father in her arms, and my aunt Bertha is standing beside them.  They are standing outside of their house on Aird Island.  My grandmother said she married so she wouldn't have to go back to residential school, after the Holy Cross Mission Residential School in Wikwemikong burnt to the ground.

My father was probably fourteen or fifteen years old, when this photograph was taken.  He is standing on the left.  The young man standing beside the little girl in the front row is George Armstrong.  My dad use to play hockey with George, when the ice froze on the lake.  They used chunks of frozen horse manure for pucks, and Eaton's catalogues for knee pads.  George went on to play for the NHL and became Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs.  My father went on to work underground in the INCO nickel mines for more than 40 years.  After I was born, George would sometimes visit us during the summer, and he would bring me NHL hockey pucks.

My dad was eighteen years old, when the war broke out in Europe in 1939.  A few months later, he would join the army to fight for the liberation of oppressed Europeans.  Indians would not be granted the right to vote in a federal election in Canada for another twenty-one years.  This is the last photograph of my father, prior to joining the army.

My dad volunteered for the army.  He was in basic training at Petawawa, Ontario, when this photograph was taken in the early 1940.  In the first photograph, Frank Sarazin is on the extreme left.  He was one of many Indian veterans who joined along with my father.  My father is the soldier in the center.  Young, courageous and innocent, they had no idea of the horrors and atrocities the war would reveal to them.

This portrait was taken before my father went overseas.  My great-aunt, Melvina Jordan, was working for Connaught Studios in Hamilton, Ontario, retouching and hand-colouring black and white photographs.  She hand-coloured this portrait of my father.  After my father was shipped overseas, my grandmother placed the portrait on a chair outside her home and photographed it.  She missed her oldest son very much, and worried about him every day.

When my father arrived overseas, he was enlisted in the 13th Field Regiment.  He was trained as an anti-artillery gunner and a dispatch rider.  He shot down low flying enemy aircraft and brought messages to the frontlines on his Harley Davidson motorcycle.  He was shot at many times and had to lay in roadside ditches for hours to avoid capture.  He landed on the beaches of Juno, during the D-Day invasion.  The war took its toll on him; he would never be the same. 

During the war, my dad stopped for a break in a small town in rural Germany.  He was resting in a barn, when he heard someone call his name.  The sun was streaming in through the barn doors, casting the approaching soldier in shadows.  The soldier called out, "Cecil is that you!"  My father was shocked.  He hadn't seen his uncle, Duncan McGregor, since he had left home several years earlier.  My great-uncle Duncan is the soldier on the extreme right.  Fate brought them together one sunny afternoon with mortar fire looming in the distance.  

This photograph was taken the day peace was declared.  They were physically exhausted and emotionally drained.  My father is the soldier leaning with hands joined on the left.  It was impossible to celebrate victory, with the horrors and atrocities of war still fresh in their memories.

My father married Edna Nellie Homer on September 8, 1945 in Birmingham, England.  He met my mother while stationed in England preparing for the invasion.  He wrote letters from the front and visited her whenever he could get a Leave Pass.  He promised after they were married, he would bring her home to Canada.  Birmingham was ravaged by war and destruction. 

This portrait was taken on their wedding day in 1945.  My father had survived the war.  He married the woman he loved, and he was preparing to return to his family in Canada.  His family were anxiously awaiting the arrival of their brave and honorable son and their English daughter-in-law.  The transition would not be an easy one.

My father wrote my mother a letter upon his arrival home.  He asked her if she would like to live in the country or in the city.  My mother said she would like to live in the country.  Having never traveled outside of England, her understanding of "country" was very different than my father's.  It would take several years before she was accustomed to Canadian winters, and several years before my grandmother could understand my her British accent.

After my mother arrived, she was quickly immersed into my father's extended family.  They celebrated their honeymoon in West Bay.  She had a difficult time communicating and assimilating into her new family.  Not long after her arrival, she wrote a letter home to her father in Birmingham, asking him to send her some money for a ticket home.  My grandfather wrote back saying, "You made your bed.  You lie in it.!"  She decided to stay.

My father has five sisters, Bertha, Marie, Evelyn, Christine and Vena, and one brother, George.  My aunties spent a lot of time helping my mother adjust to her new family and made the effort to make her feel apart of the family.  Not long after her arrival, my mother and father were expecting their first child.  But stress on my mother took its toll.  My sister was born with a severe heart condition, and she died two days after her birth.  My father never held his daughter in his arms. 

The photograph on the left, is the first photograph of my father holding my brother at three months of age.  My brother, David, was born on October 19, 1950.  My father had reached a new stage in his life.  He now faced the new challenge and responsibility of being a father; something that was noticeably absent in his own upbringing.  My father was very proud of his son and gave him everything he never had.

I was born on April 7, 1958.  In the photograph on the left, my father is holding me in his arms.  My parents told me that I was conceived at a fishing lodge called Shangri La.  Despite the fact that I was told I was an accident, I take great pleasure in the thought that I was conceived in a place associated with paradise.   My father remembers me as a hyper-active child, doing everything I was told not to do.  The photograph on the right spans four generations, taken in the early 1960s.  I am posed with my father, grandmother and great-grandmother.  It illustrates the importance of family my grandmother and great-grandmother instilled in him.  My father spent a lot of time taking me on extended hunting and fishing trips.  He taught me how to live off the land and to respect it.

My father has lived a long, prosperous and healthy life and has witnessed immense social, cultural, political, economic and historic change during the twentieth century.  He was born into the height of the industrial revolution and has lived to embraced the technological revolution, as he enters the new millennium surfing the "net"  and sending e-mails.  He is a loving and caring father that has gone out of his way for his family and community.  He is truly a brave and honorable man in every sense of the word.  He is a great story-teller with a wealth of knowledge and a wonderful sense of humor.  Throughout his life, he has faced many difficult situations with extreme bravery and continues to be a strong influence in my life.