After Basic Training... Parades and Movie Stars

Heroes Remember

After Basic Training... Parades and Movie Stars

Transcript

They sent us to Toronto, and I went to clerical school in Toronto and it was down on Jarvis Street. You know where Jarvis Street, Toronto is, it was the home of the prostitutes then. And we were down on Jarvis Street at the, at the training school there and after we graduated from there, then we did Victory Loan parades. So, I was there for a while doing Victory Loan parades and Victory Loan parades were always marshalled by some very important parade marshal, it was always somebody who was very, very important, either in Canada or, and lot of movie stars came up and they parade marshalled for our parades, for one of our parades, cause I was in many, for one of our parades was Walter Pidgeon, well-known Canadian actor that had, had been, was in Hollywood and it, we were, the people in Toronto invited the, the girls that took place, took part in the parade to their homes for the weekend then. It was always on Saturday, usually. Not always, usually on a Saturday, and you were invited out then for dinner and to stay the night and they would bring us back to barracks the next day. So, this time, we were invited to the home of D.B. Pidgeon, the half-brother of Walter Pidgeon. So we had, we had two each. And they always, we always usually went in pairs or some, some richer homes would take, that had more room, would take four or six and then, but it was quite an exciting thing for us. Two eighteen year-olds, you know have, sitting and having dinner with a movie star in those days, right after the Depression. So...

Description

Mrs Grégoire tells us about all the up sides of clerical training in Toronto.

Christina Janet Grégoire

Mrs. Grégoire was born in Campbellton, New Brunswick, on March 1, 1925, and grew up in Sillarsville, Québec. In March 1943, when she was 18, she joined the Air Force in Montréal. After training at Rockcliffe and a first posting in Scoudouc she was given a Top Secret rating by the RCMP before being assigned to the Air Force Headquarters Intelligence Directorate in Ottawa. She was discharged after VJ Day and released in November 1945. She now gives workshops for the United Church and is involved in volunteering in various Hospital Veterans' Wards.

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