 My name is Carol Strellef. I was born in Yorkton, Saskatchewan. I lived on the farm nearby and went to one-room school. The children around were all just like us. We had very little and we were able to go to school till grade eight, then we had to take correspondence and then the last year I managed to go to school in town, which was not a very satisfactory thing, but I did it and after school I went to work for the Saskatchewan government telephones and I was with them two years and a girlfriend persuaded me to come to Vancouver and I worked for the Bank of Montreal for about a year and I saw this ad once in the paper about wanting recruits for the Wrens. So I didn't know anything about the military because we had did not have anybody in the family that had served in the military and so I got myself down to HMCS Discovery, which was a sort of a challenge in those days as I recall and signed up and I did not know what I was doing. But anyway, I signed on the dotted line and I was in. I was still working in the Bank, of course, and I was to appear every Tuesday night to finally start my career in the Navy. So I did that and eventually we were issued uniforms and the uniforms were we were very fortunate and there was a lot of leftover supplies from World War II, which had finished several years prior, but the quality of everything was good. It didn't fit, but that was all right. That didn't seem to matter and the first thing of course we were told to we learned was marching and keeping our heads up and don't scratch your nose or anything like that and we were taught by the ex chief Betty officers that had served in the Navy. So they were not exactly they were nice nice old men at the time. We that's not just the right way to say it, but we they were also very kind and very helpful. So we gradually moved on. There'd be one course after another, but basically evenings all evenings were started with marching and precision and we learned to salute of course and then eventually as time passed the first requirement is to take a basic training and the basic training then was HMCS Cornwallis for everyone. So we went by train to Cornwallis, which I would never have gotten there otherwise, I guess, but we had the usual again more marching and basic courses in the rules and roads of the Navy and I think that went well and when we came back we were back at Discovery and I was enrolled in the TAS department which was torpedo anti-submarine control and we were taught by the various sailors on what that was which was underwater radar and that took place all of the first winter I guess it was. Then the second year there was an opening at several openings for Wrens that wanted to volunteer for special duty at HMCS Star in Hamilton, Ontario and that was Khan, which was the head office of the naval reserves for all of Canada. At that time we had 23 naval reserve depots across Canada like Edmonton Calgary, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg and several in Manitoba and several in Quebec and the Maritimes of course. So my next trip was to HMCS Staticona for further training and we were actually taken out onto the areas where the men had trained during the war which was detected ships that came in to Bedford Basin and I think we took we'd go out for the day and take along the the give us cooks who gave us wonderful hefty meals and therefore thus went Staticona. They were quite strict there and a lot of high-ranking men of the Navy were stationed of course in Halifax because at that point the threat of hostilities in the Pacific were still very evident in the theater of war over there so they kept we would be taken on our sea time was a day trips on one of the small HMCS ships to out into the Great Lakes well that was great for us we thought we'd sunbathe on the deck and so I spent several months at HMCS Star and then came back to Vancouver and carried out my I did make one more trip back to Staticona for training because at that point I had tried the TAS division for the Wrens was discontinued and we I went into the meteorology department which was starting out very new and of course meteorology then was very very basic but it was very interesting and I really like that but my five-year term had come to an end also by that time I was married so it wasn't always just so easy to get away and take the required two weeks training which would have taken place over at HMCS in Victoria or be sent east so at that point I left I left the Navy when I left I was the leading ran and I was out for a short time enjoying my my freedom away from the Navy because I felt I'd done my my duty but I was soon recruited to the Renance which came under the Navy League of Canada which were very active and they were the girls from at that time they were 12 to 15 and so I joined the it was called the HD Stonecore at HMCS Discovery and we met again every week and we had 90 up to 90 girls of those those ages during that time and we taught them everything seamanship and ropes and protocol and signaling and things like that and I progressed from being a sub lieutenant to a lieutenant and my I spent three the first two years as a divisional officer and then about three years as a executive officer or more and in my final years I was commanding officer of the Ed Stonecore when I decided I had contributed enough and and I let left retired from there I spent a few years just being at home and working and gardening and what have you and then in 1993 my husband and I he had been a secret at HMCS Discovery for many years and so we joined the Royal Canadian Legion at branch 60 in West Vancouver and during that time we volunteered for everything that we could do we helped a lot with the poppy campaign and various drives that we had to raise funds for the veterans hospitals and my husband was on the executive committee a great deal of the time he set up the membership program the first time they used to do it on it with paper and pencil and they graduated into computers so I worked with him setting up because at that point we had about 800 members in the Legion and he did that for many years plus it became as he was a very loved the Navy discipline as I did too he was sergeant at arms at the at branch 60 in West Vancouver and I used to participate and as a member of the color party for many years which was a very reward wording and a proud thing to be able to do and so we attended a lot of ceremonies throughout and we continued that right up until quite recently a color party is made made up of a group of people mostly people that would that have had experience I was just sort of tossed into it by my husband because he was the sergeant at arms and always needed bodies so but I happily went along with it now my coordination is reasonably good so I was able to do so we attended various functions unfortunately celebrations of life for a lot of those and parades of course and and anything where the Legion was required to be present they usually had a had a color party and it was a very very rewarding thing to to have done people and people always like to see the military and they like to see the flags if we always carried first the Canadian flag the Union Jack the provincial flag and the municipal flag plus NATO NATO flags and depending on depending on the occasion if it happened to be a European country that would be represented as as well and the sergeant at arms had to look after if there we had visiting visiting ship for example I remember occasion where when we had a ship from Mexico and it's up to the people to provide their national anthem which can sometimes be a challenge but it always seemed to work I think so my time as a member of the color party was always you felt very proud I don't know why that was I guess I just happened that's power of advertising I just happen to see the ad in the in the local in the Vancouver Sun I guess and then once you're in with the Navy you're so proud of it and there's considerable competition so you know you put all your efforts in into that and so I never never gave any thought about that many girls like to join different things because of the uniforms well the Navy was the least attractive when I was an HMCS star it was summertime and and knowing the Great Lakes in summer it's very very hot and humid even though the base was right on the water and we were issued dresses that had been issued during World War II and they were just a plain lightweight material with a gold buttons down the front and a white collar and and cuffs that you had to wash every night and iron and and put back on the sleeves and they these dresses were so unattractive semen at the at the gate used to call us the home for wayward girls so you you can picture that so anyway I would have never thought anything of joining the Army or no disrespect or Air Force I just wasn't I wasn't a great student I never could pass a math exam I was good at literature and I enjoyed that and and geography which to this day I I like enjoy both but no I was not because I I was so be I felt I was so behind because having to sort of struggle on my own doing correspondence we would do the car we were out on a mail route the lessons would come to us and we would do a lesson and mail it back to Regina the head head office at the at the time so I guess I got through that okay and I believe at the end of the year I had to go into town to write a final exam and my marks were never very very high because my I just wasn't a really clever clever student I think well my parents say they were very loving parents but also very we minded them they said do it you did it like my dad he said we would say well I can't do that and he'd say there's no such word as can't so I've always liked discipline and following the rules I've met people in different that have come from elsewhere that say laws are made to be broken I've never thought that way I think that the laws are made by people that have experienced things I know we all we don't agree with a lot of them but but they're there so follow them or do something about it when when I joined the naval league and one of the first questions as as an instructor we would ask the new recruits why they joined the renats and they'd say because we want the discipline or we like the discipline because we don't get it at home and I've never forgotten that and I think it applies a great deal to generations that have come from that but that was a very good lesson to know well our lifestyle was it as soon as you were able to walk you worked so we worked along with our parents we did not have electricity or a vehicle or anything we had horses and we had coal oil lamps and we grew everything that we ate in our gardens and raised chickens and animals and we had very little contact with the neighborhood children because we were all a mile or so apart we would meet at school there were about 23 of us at the school usually grades one to eight and we so we had very little contact very little contact with the with the outside world but we had a happy healthy life and couldn't beat it so as for the children in town we thought oh they're lucky they they have cold pop and things like that but that's about but all I can remember from from that but we worked we we did gardens and it was hot and dry and and it but it was a good training and I think today it's the factor in the fact that nothing really bothers me or upsets me be it temperature or people or what have you so it's it's a good background for for anybody we used to be we we'd build houses in in the winter we'd have a skating rink which was mother's wash water from the from the Monday washing and we'd bank the snow up clear the lawn and and we'd have a skating skating rink it probably snow every day but we cleared it and we had old skates that my dad had brought from Winnipeg back in in the 1920s so we had these old skates and we had sticks for hockey sticks but we played but we always said we're glad when school used to finish the end of June and start the first week in September except for some years we'd go back August the first because the winters were so cold back then that we wouldn't go back until February the first so they even the school year out but we used to say we'd be so glad to get back to school because it's not holidays they're work days because that's all we did was work oh that was in the old days of a switchboard where you had a crank telephone that you round the crank around until you got central which was the and and the often a lot of the small towns had switchboards and some of them would be in the ladies kitchen but she'd be the operator for that town and she was very respected and held a great deal of power and so it was quite interesting i was in camsack my first year and a half before i transferred to regina and in everybody knew everybody and there were rural lines so when the phone rang for mrs. jones everybody on that line would listen to mrs. jones so that's how we got a lot of our news you know and so it was and when i went to this sort of muse people today when i went to regina as a newcomer the first thing they do you are you are put on the shift for time and people would phone into the telephone office for the time and you would have to sit and the station was behind a large switchboard hot and airless and you would sit there and you just say 901 901 901 because people would phone in and you could even know you you just did it when the light came on you knew somebody was out there trying to get the time and but you just had to sit there and the number of times i remember falling asleep and i think the shifts were quite long too you had to stay awake one of the things with regard to my childhood on the farm was at the fact that i guess it would be the government of canada asked that people collect bones dried animal bones and aluminum so we used to scurry about the countryside collecting these bones because there had been a lot of antelope antelope and i'm not sure about buffalo in in the area but the bones being a the dry country that it was the bones quite well preserved so these bones and any aluminum that we could possibly recover from old cars that had been on machinery that had been left in the ditches we would gather up and i guess our dad would take them into the elevator which was the collection area for this process and these bones and aluminum they went to i would think to the toronto area to a munitions factory because they were gathering up everything possible that they could turn into munitions so it must have been quite a successful program and at the same time we were on rations but very small because we grew everything that we ate but we were rationed to sugar and we were given stamps and i guess when you went into the local town mr smith's grocery you they had to give a stamp and then you were allowed so much sugar because they were sugar of course was much was going towards the munitions end of things and uh so i don't remember too much about that but i remember mother being very careful that we all had our own share and we had six jars of sugar on the counter and we would have competitions as to who could eat less not more but less and at the same time i was thinking that some of the older farm boys in the area joined the services there were quite a number of them as a matter of fact and all of them as i recall came back safely and settled back in on the farms and at that point they were a few years older so wanted their own homes and they were assisted by the department of veterans affairs to by land and and settle at that time no i think we were excited anytime we saw anything that no that that it wasn't it didn't we didn't consider it work it was great fun and competition i suppose we were just you know small children at at the time so um no it wasn't considered work it was a diversion i don't think so uh because we were just busy going to school and and working and to help our parents and we of course through the party line we would hear from their mothers that all would always sell safe and of course the ladies circle we all i i remember knitting scarves we were given wool i believe i suppose the government somehow or other arranged that and we were given wool so that um any of us that could knit and that's when i learned to knit uh we knit scarves gloves gloves and toaks uh for that were sent over overseas to the to the army but everybody sort of pitched in and did what they could these are not the one pin is from hmcs discovery it's just to commemorate the unit that i belong to uh the uh a medal that i have was given to the legion members here at the 75th anniversary of the beginning of branch 60 in west van cruver so that covers that but the rest are one is the one is the tutor crown and that was just present presented for various functions that we had and the other one of course is my life membership in the legion which i was given in given the honor of in july of 2005 a life member is is awarded to people that have spent extra time with the legion and are and um of good character and um it's quite it's quite an honor that your fellow comrades recognize you as being that over the years i've i've done a lot quite a few very interesting things for 10 years i coordinated the veterans visits to the schools in west van cruver there are 17 schools there were at that time that uh the veterans visited and the the the um the uh principles of the school would invite the veterans and to attend the assemblies that each school would have when i first started which was started doing this was 1998 i had at least 200 members that i could draw on to cover all of the schools and i was able to do that but as the years passed the veterans became scarcer and um there were very few people but uh so at the end of my tenure of the 10 years that i did it uh there were very few people but they did carry on sort of volunteering on their on their own if they had grandchildren or children going to that particular school they would do it on their own so unfortunately they could not do it the way we were able to do it in the early days but it was very rewarding because the we would speak to the in some cases speak to the children and they would listen and were very interested most of them and because so often they had grandparents that had been in the military so they would know slightly a little slightly about the military and i also my husband was sergeant at arms of the color party there and um i was soon just handed a flag and said become part of it which i did i enjoyed it we would attend parades and memorial services for a lot of the veterans which was not a well an honor to do it but it's sad sad occasions and church services occasionally and parades of course and various events that would happen around the city at the color party would be called and there again there was a great number of us we when i first started there would have been at least 20 to call on but as time went on it changed and now which is very a very fine thing to do they have to rely on many of the older cadets from the various services other than that i just enjoyed helping me the legion on any committee i could do and i helped my husband a great deal he was membership chairman and set up the new membership from a pencil and paper system to the new computer system that they still use today i believe um well we met in two ways he worked across the street at at uh a e juke's the investment people and i worked for pemberton security so he used to come in as a to deliver stock certificates so i met him there and then also we met at at discovery he had been with the uh c cadets for a number of years but um when i joined he was a recognizable face so we were married for 61 years uh in the c cadets i think he was just a general seaman but when he he moved on from c cadets to the ship's company at h mc s discovery and he he um uh reached the ranks of um petty officer second class with um three three stripes which is unusual be he which meant that he he he put in the time but did not get the promotions but he had that and then um uh uh he he was it was in long enough 14 years long enough to be awarded the canadian armed forces decoration he was very very proud of that meteorology was quite new and i remember at one time i was the only student taking it and um with the um officer that gave it to me so i think i spent the better part of a training year learning that but that was about the extent of it because then there wasn't i wasn't enough interest so the course was cancelled and i i think it was about that time that i just uh that i was finished my tour of duty and uh and left the the rands i i don't think so the women were in the permanent services i think they were gradually getting more resignation recognition and um uh able to join branches that they weren't otherwise able able to do but they it was sort of an uphill battle all the time so i don't uh by that time i had left and of course there's been so many changes since but because the the men were always first any anyway and we didn't in in those days we just didn't give it any thought that's the way it was and so we didn't know any different oh i believe so yes women speak out now whereas we didn't here's a a little item when we joined um when i joined uh we were issued a full kit complete with a great big beautiful duffel bag not very glamorous and we were issued with our our ties black ties and a bow tie and uh gym socks and gyms shorts as well as our there were no pants that i recall for women then our jackets and skirts and shirts and um when i left the starsmen still have that not to just a pencil and paper system of keeping things the starsmen i i knew i had to bring return my kit which would be you'd been wearing for five years but they still wanted it back there must be good reason and i returned everything that i had in good condition but i was missing my gym socks and they charged me 26 cents for those and my bow tie for which they charged me 14 cents i will always remember that and i i think the the store the store's keeper just enjoyed another beer on us even my duffel bag which had been tossed about up from trains and different different things was not the clean one that i had received but they didn't they got it back i think it gave me more more confidence i've always been quite shy around people and coming forward and but it um it gave me confidence that's the most thing and it widens your like i knew nothing about the military but i've certainly over the years become very aware of it and keep up to it through this very day as to what is going on because it's amazing a number of people if you mentioned something and they just have no idea of what you're talking about there so it's it broadens one's mind tremendously i feel when you know what's going on in other parts of the world and there's lots going on i have lived in west vancouver since 1962 we were in our our home right up until this this summer when i sold the home but yes all things have changed tremendously all of the when i came over here park rural was only um a strip mall on the north side and a very nice little shops you know there was woodwards general store one um uh and the north end and where you could buy absolutely everything you ever needed and then at the at the south end was the vegetable uh market and in between that there were all kinds of nice little shops tea shops chocolate shops dress shops a winemaking store and a kitchen gadget store anything you would want and that was that was park rural then it was in i believe the sixties later in the sixties that park rural south started and of course we all know what it's like today and also when um our turn off from marine drive was 29th street and up from 25th onward there were no sidewalks so it was just two lane road one coming one going as i recall and um nice nice homes which now have been demolished and replaced by large homes and also um there were a lot of children we used to have about 64 children right in on our street now we have zero or maybe maybe two or three but there just aren't the children that were there and because i i remember know that very well from halloween when the number of candy bags i used to give out at the door now for the last few years i would have i'd have my candy bags ready but no children i think um it very it used to be a pleasure to go to vancouver and i worked over town right from the time that i came to vancouver in 1949 up until my retirement and um things used to be it was a nice city now it's just overwhelming every every building has gone has gone and replaced by high rises and um just quite quite different but then that's it's 2020 now so it has to be well i think it happened in say the last 10 to 20 years since which is the time that i no longer went downtown to work every day and to go there again it's just so i it was sort of in that during that time where things really changed in the early 20s 20s yes um i made friends with a girl from nyagra falls and i i met her when i was stationed at hmcs star in hamilton and she she used to take me home to her home on weekends in nyagra falls and because i remember they had grapes hanging over their kitchen and everything it was just a lovely lovely spot and she and i kept corresponded right up until recent years she's no longer with us unfortunately but and we traveled to new new york together and she was just one of these people that um we just clicked right from the start we had a lot in common we loved music and and um travel and interesting interesting thing she was a very interesting person we do have two or three one in particular is now the sergeant at arms a very fine young man and um he's been in vancouver in a few years now i'm not just uh too sure but a very fine young man well trained and always looks so smart and nice but um and of course i i don't know how many but we would have some members from the bosnian era and um it was funny uh i just learned not too recently i guess through tv uh when the legions were formed of course that was just shortly after world war one and then when the world war two people veterans came back the world war there was they didn't um get along too well because the world war one thought that the world war two people had it pretty easy and maybe in some respects they did so i guess over time that was started out because the world war one fellows were on the decline and then world war two but then i believe the same thing must happen now or it did happen that the world war two veterans and started resented the bosnian but that was a very bad war and uh so then as now as we're running very short of any veterans at all from because the numbers are so small from these two previous conflicts um they now have have brought in civilian people used to be relatives but now it's they've even dropped that just to keep the membership up that so that anyone even though they have no connection with the military um are able to join so that they don't have the same background or knowledge of um what what the the legion is all about uh oh it's quite different because it's in nowadays can resemble more like a sports bar downtown uh they have no knowledge of the um of the purpose of the legion they're very most people are good at volunteering when asked but it's just another club i don't like using that word but that's that's how it is so it's so important that the older and they're becoming very few people and not much credit to to them that do keep the interest of the legion together it won't last forever but we hope it does um well i would recommend the cadet services um very definitely and because there is such a good opportunity for for them to learn their discipline and the one thing that the cadet services emphasize when they do join they they must not become lacks as far as their education they promote that just just as well and there is an opportunity um for them especially in the air force because they the young ones are taken out to the flying places and learned a lot about aircraft and so many and of course boys are very keen on on engines and aircraft and so so are the girls and the girls are writing and it's very nice to see that leadership that the girls do take on in the uh services when when i was with the navy league they're the girls were all by themselves there was no and the the cadets were the the boys they were all you know separate areas whereas now it's uh all together so and that that's very good oh my goodness i i really do not know i was certainly very proud of having been in the services i can tell you that but the rest i always um did a good job at everything i i know i'm bragging but i did a good job at everything i did or i didn't do it there was there was no half halfway with me i think they should um be thinking of how they got there nowadays it's so so different with the the new age and the electronics that they should be thinking back of where did they come from and i it seems to me that you don't do do that until you're much older then you start start thinking uh that uh where your your parents come from but i think um to be able to reflect back and remember about their dad and their granddad and great-grandfather is very important i do keep in touch with the girl that was my executive officer willeen and then another friend there i considered them two of my best friends uh because when you get on in years you don't have too many friends that they're not with you and my other friend judy in um edmonton she has been a very loyal friend phones me every week and she was one of my rennet officers when i was at discovery as was willeen of course mm-hmm when you think of it my our district was my great my great-grandfather came out in nine in 1863 like i used to think that was a long time ago but it wasn't and uh like my dad was born after the real rebellion and things like that the it wasn't really the way things move nowadays it wasn't uh a very long time and some of and we used to find the odd arrowhead from the indians that roamed the plains you know it all sounds very romantic to to people nowadays but it really happened and and when i stopped and think about it that my dad came out to the and his dad and and brother came out when all of these hostilities were had just finished sort of well they never finished but finished and um uh i don't feel it was that long ago and now but interesting times they're where and you know i've talked to my sister recently about that this because they had their own school uh up along the highway we never saw them and um but they lived lived somewhere and kept to themselves very much there was no no trouble whatsoever that that i can remember because we didn't know them um at all but they were certainly very evident at the time i think my my dad was a pretty headstrong person but you had to be you you know it was a hard hard life because um uh when he moved out to the farm and things were where you know they practically lived in a tent to but anything because the government gave them land least land and um to to get the west moving they're still trying to do it and so i i think it was uh my dad was sort of like that mum followed along because like my mother never wrote a check until she was on her own and my dad died in 72 and she had to and she would say oh i can't write a check i'm so nervous and you know so it was um i was always very independent that way just to be remembered as a good person i think that's all i can can think of i spent i spent my life looking after people so that's all i think i want to be remembered remembered by i'm such a i'm a very independent person and i'm going to look after myself till the last breath i think uh and um i i don't like everybody offers to do things and i thank them very much that's very nice but i'll carry on and do it my way and um i just saw something this is off the track about the lady that married the first wife of Ernest Hemingway as she was the very well known and first woman war correspondent at world war one and they said you don't say no to her and if you do she doesn't listen anyway so i'm something like that it's always been with me right from the day the day i was born i think it was and um i sort of thought everything on my on my own and if ever i was sort of in trouble like throughout my adult life even i can always think of two or three things to get me out of that trouble i you know i don't just throw my hands in the air and and give up i don't think it's not i think it's because i've been on my own you know quite a bit so you'd have to do your own thinking i have nobody to say you don't who get advice from which i probably wouldn't listen to anyway