The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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224494 Enid Sellors from:North Ormesby, Middlesbrough Memories of a 2nd World War evacuee. I remember being taken to Middlesbrough railway station in early August 1940 by my loving Mam and Dad who put me on a train with other evacuees to travel to Liverpool and then by boat on the SS Antonia to Canada. I believe I was the youngest evacuee on that boat (aged 5) and spent the first three days suffering from seasickness but was cared for by a very nice lady who was in charge of four of us during the voyage. Arriving in Halifax, we were sent by train to various parts of Canada, my destination being Regina, Saskatchewan where I was taken in by a very kind family who had a daughter about the same age as me and she became my “Canadian sister”. We have kept in touch and met up on numerous occasions during the last 70 years. Returning to England in 1945 on the SS Britannic was an emotional time for me and my wonderful parents who had missed four and a half years of my young life. I hold happy memories of my time in Canada where I had such a different sort of life to the one I would have had in England (which I’m sure would have been just as much fun). I was introduced to pumpkin pie, corn on the cob, peanut butter and doughnuts. There were heavy snowfalls in winter so there was a lot of “digging out” and snow clearance. Winter meant skating on The Creek and going for sleigh rides. Summer meant long drives past never-ending wheat fields to spend weekends with friends who had a cabin by a lake where we could swim safely. Roller skating was a favourite pastime probably followed by a visit to a soda bar and sitting on high stools to drink colourful milkshakes – this was when I was a bit older. My children and grandchildren enjoy listening to me telling them about my unusual childhood. It would be nice to hear from anyone else who was on the SS Antonia (I believe she made only one voyage with evacuees). I have some photos of me from the local press in Saskatchewan. As I initially had no family waiting to adopt me when I arrived, my details were shown in the local press along with a photo of me with the British actress Madeleine Carroll who was in Canada visiting the child evacuees. Enid Sellors Related Content: Evacuees Can you help us to add to our records? Add a record to our website. The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them Did you or your relatives live through the Second World War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial? Were you or your relative evacuated? Did an air raid affect your area? If so please let us know. Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice. Contact us. Celebrate your own Family History Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Secomd World War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc. Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.

The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items. The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions. If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running. Hosted by: The Wartime Memories Project Website is archived for preservation by the British Library Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV - All Rights Reserved We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.