Description
Mr. Sperry talks about where he was when war was declared.
Bishop John Sperry
Mr. Sperry was born on Leicester, England, in 1924. He joined the Royal Navy in 1943 and served until 1946 on Destroyer, Escort and Convoy Duty. Upon completion of his tour of duty, Bishop Sperry immigrated to Canada in 1960, serving parishes in Kugluktuk (formerly Coppermine) and Fort Smith. He served as diocesan bishop from 1973 to 1990 and is the author of <em>Igloo Dwellers Were My Church</em>, a memoir of his ministry in the North. An accomplished linguist, he was involved in the Inuktitut Bible translation for the people of the Western Arctic. In retirement, he works with health and volunteer organizations and is Chaplain of the Canadian Forces Northern Region. On July 5, 2002, he was named to the Order of Canada.
Transcript
On a Sunday, I think, and we were, went to church and the, the old minister had a piece of paper passed to him during the, halfway through the service and he paused and read it and he said, "I am very sorry to say that today, our country, has declared ward, war on Germany," and within two or three days after that we had to line up for gas masks. We had to go to a school and to be fitted with a, gas mask and there, there after, for a considerable time, we had to carry them on to, to school, and you couldn't get in to a cinema with your little cobble box, which was your mask and you had to have a little test, to, to go into a place and just open the edge of the mask and get a whiff of the gas. It wasn't very serious, just to let you know if there was a gas attack and we heard for the first time, the air raid siren in our country, in our Leicester, and we heard what we're going to hear later on.