Church on Sunday

Heroes Remember

Church on Sunday

Transcript

Funny story, cause Freddy and I were Jewish, and we'd have church parades on Sunday, and in Aldershot, there weren't too many reformed synagogues. And so, we had our choice between going to the Anglican church parade or the RC church parade, or just not going, I think that may have been an option, but we never considered it an option, we just had to get to God somehow. And we always had an Anglican padre who was as much our padre as he was anybody's. Even though, you know, they had, on our dog tags, your religion. They have RC for Roman Catholic, UC for United Church, CE for the Church of England, and OD for all the rest of us. Very upsetting for a member of the senior religion to be just an other denomination, and we were. Anyway, we used to go and we used to sit side by side, and listen to the prayers, and we used to edit them. We would leave out the words we couldn't say, and do what we could say. We wanted to be one of the boys. It was pretty difficult when it got to honour the Christian soldiers because there was just so much enthusiasm in the crowd you just had to join in and belt it out. But we managed somehow. But as I go back to our regimental church parades at St. Paul's church in Toronto here, and read the Apostle's creed, I have no idea how we ever did get through that. But maybe that is one of the casualties of war.

Description

Mr. Danson remembers attending church on Sunday with the Christians even though he was Jewish.

Barnet J (Barney) Danson

Mr. Danson was born in Ontario, 1921. Before the war, Mr. Danson worked for Columbia pictures. As a Jewish man, he was aware of the political situation in Europe. His instincts told him that war was imminent and he felt a sense of urgency to fight. As a result, he joined the Army during peacetime in hopes of being trained and ready to serve if war broke out. Mr. Danson was an Infantry Officer with the Queen's Own Rifles of Canada. In the Fall of 1944 he was wounded, thus ending his war effort. After the war, he had a successful business and later entered politics where he served as the Minister of Defence in the Trudeau Government.

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