Description
Mr. Fisk discusses his reasons for enlisting.
Kenneth Fisk
Mr. Fisk was born in Walkerton, Ontario, in 1926. His parents, despite the depression, both worked; his mother as an RN, and his father as a fruit farmer on their small rural farm. Unable to convince his dad to authorize his early enlistment, Mr. Fisk was forced to wait until late 1945 before he saw active service. His relatively short career was spent in the Gulf of St. Lawrence aboard the mine sweeper HMCS <em>New Liskeard</em>. He returned home to Ontario in late 1946 when sweeping for stray mines ended. He now resides in Harriston, Ontario, and remains a proud member of his local Royal Canadian Legion.
Transcript
And, you know, we started hearing about this fella, Adolf Schnicklgruber or better known as Adolf Hitler and we kind of grew up with that in highschool. That's why the army cadets was as important as it was in the eyes of the authorities. They were trying to prepare the young people for eventual service, I guess. You wanted to be one of the guys, so that's why you joined up and it wasn't a matter of patriotism, so much as everybody is doing it, so I'm going to do it to. And I was sort of filled in on war by my father and I think that had and influence on me too. I'm sure it did, because an awful lot of the guys I chummed with were the sons of old flats. I, I received this letter to the effect that they wouldn't enlist me because I was too young, but that I would hear from them in due course. So in, I think it was February of 45, I reserved, received notice that I was to report to Kingston, to be kitted up for the Fleet Air Arm. So I went down there and went through the various tests and examinations and they decided I was colour blind and I can remember the old commander saying, "I don't know what your worth, but that plane that you might be flying, is worth a half a million so your not going to fly any plane for us, because you won't know whether that other guy is going or coming, red, green, red, green, you know port, starboard, red, green." They went over you pretty well and that's where they picked up this colour blindness, that said I could not fly and sort of the end of the story. They then said well, I was, I was already signed into the British Navy of course and they said "We'll transfer you over to the Canadian Navy".