Making Christmas Day Enjoyable

Heroes Remember

Making Christmas Day Enjoyable

Transcript

I remember Christmas Day. We had, I think, the Minister of National Defence visiting and, you know, Terra Nova happened to be in port. We had Christmas trees shipped over from Canada too so, you know, one of the only ships in port with a Christmas tree (inaudible) with Christmas lights on. These were all morale things and, of course, on Christmas morning nobody got dressed; we were all in our jammies. And, of course, there’s a tradition that the youngest sailor on the ship is the captain for the day so he comes up and meets the captain and gets his rank insignia and wears it for the day. And I did the same switching over to second youngest sailor so it was interesting because they did the rounds throughout the ship and we got the officers involved in cleaning stations and it was just sort of if you just think of the, I don’t know the university dorm with people there over Christmas holidays just sort of relaxing and having a good time. And we had tons and tons of presents sent over and I think one of the officers got dressed up as Santa Claus and carried a sack around delivering things and we had things from the family resource centre where sort of everyone got something and they were all wrapped and that really stood out in my mind and it just made Christmas Day a little bit softer for… knowing that we weren’t home enjoying it with our families.

Description

Mr. Bathurst shares a tradition exercised on board ship on Christmas Day and the activities shared amongst the sailors to make it an enjoyable occasion at sea.

David Bathurst

Mr. David Bathurst was born March 21, 1951 in the United Kingdom. His father, being a member of the Royal Navy, saw a better future for his family in Canada and immigrated there and joined the Royal Canadian Navy. Following his father’s path, during his teenage years, he made the decision to enter military college and enrolled in Royal Military College as an officer cadet. Upon completing university he was immediately guaranteed employment and continued on to Esquimalt for training before moving back to the east coast and rose through the ranks to Executive Officer on board the HMCS Terra Nova, a key part of his career. Mr. Bathurst is now retired from the military and works as a real estate agent. He contributes his success in life to the elaborate training and experiences he had during his military career. Mr. Bathurst and family presently reside in the province of Nova Scotia.

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