tmi Publications Author’s Presentation

Thanks Pam and Steve, Welcome everyone and thanks for coming to share this day with me. Thinking about how the idea for this book got started I have to go back to 1978 when my marriage of 17 years was failing. My wife and I were both children at the beginning of the Second World War and had strongly shared ideals and emotions when we married. But we both experienced much disruption in our lives as children during that war and for many years after it ended. As we matured as adults, we were totally unaware that it was having big impact on our behaviour. I started to realize this when I read an article by Patricia Thompson in the Montreal Gazette newspaper called World of Chewing Gum and Death.     I begin reading from my Introduction with her first words: “Britain was at war when I was a toddler. Like thousands of kids born at that time I was unaware that I was living in the middle of a holocaust. When I discovered that England was at war with Germany, I thought it was normal because I had known nothing else”. And reading her last words: “Now the war was over. Holding my sisters hand I walked home through the bomb scarred streets, I sensed that something was different about the street where I had played with so many wartime kids. Ons side of it had been completely destroyed, killing some of my little friends. A lump came into my throat. My eyes began to fill with tears. Heaven was on the other side of death, so I believed, and that’s where my playmates were. With the angels”. I was immediately struck by her writing and knew, as she did, that something important had happened to us as kids that set a certain tone and attitude as we came into adult life. I phoned Patricia to thank her for her perceptions but hardly knew how talk to her about what was for me a serious emotional reaction toward what seemed to be a revealing truth. It was then that I started to wonder why I was driven to over reach my abilities to the point of failure, and why I was unable to sustain a loving relationship. Why was I achieving success in a competitive business world, but suffering severe headaches, unable to relax on weekends and holidays, and having to fill my time with compulsive activity. Then in 1979 I met Pam also, like me, born in 1939. Together we started to work on the difficult emotional issues we both inherited from that war and  with the help of a loving and capable partner  my life started to improve.  After she retired from teaching in 1994 Pam wrote about her pioneering work as a teacher with young children, and I was inspired to start writing about my own personal history. In 2008 we travelled to London, the city of my birth,  and visited with my cousin Gerry Roper and his wife Jenny. Gerry was born there during the bombing blitz in January 1941  Gerry was teaching professional photography at a London College, following in the footsteps of our grandfather Frederic, his own father Wilfrid,  and our uncle George, who all worked in photography for newspapers and magazines. In  2014 we went with Gerry to the Royal Air Force Museum and met the Research Director to find out more about the heroic action Jenny’s father who was John Hannah.   Her father received the Victoria Cross for saving his aircraft during an Royal Air Force attack on the German fleet that was preparing to invade England. He died at age 25 as a result of his injuries. Being so close to many of the aircraft types that fought for our survival, and Gerry’s very thorough  research into the life of John Hannah further inspired me in my own writing. On our next visit in 2017 Gerry drove us to visit the scenes of my war time childhood where I took several photographs that are in my book. He also took us to other historic locations like Winston Churchill’s residence at Chartwell in Kent. Then in 2018 there was an amazing development when I received over two hundred photographs taken by our grandfather Frederic that Gerry had saved and digitized. These were of the times when Frederic was sent as a photo journalist to the Balkan wars in 1912, to Africa to photograph wild life for Kodak in 1914, and to France to photograph war graves for the Red Cross in 1915.  A few months later I received hundreds more photographs from Gerry that were taken by our Uncle George when he was an officer on an aircraft carrier during the battle to free the besieged island of Malta. Also included were his own father’s photographs from The Daily News Chronicle during the London blitz, and during his RAF training and photo reconnaissance action to end the war in Italy. As well Gerry sent me copies of family registrations, certificates, employment letters, and census records. During this time Gerry also located our grandfather Frederic’s unmarked grave. Then Gerry and I erected a grave stone to commemorate Frederic’s war service. I then contacted the Royal Air Force and received my own fathers service record from which I learned much more about the difficulties and dangers of his six years of service and separation from his family. There were several other valuable contributions by individuals and authors that provided me with the elements I needed to complete a draft history of three generations of the Roper family. But then we had news from London that Gerry was being treated for lung cancer, and very sadly this amazing guy died on 1st April 2022. Because his contribution was so unique and substantial, I have dedicated my book to his memory. When I started writing I was thinking about my own childhood experiences and memories. But with the thousands of digitized photographs and documents from Gerry, I quickly realized that the truth about our grandfather’s service in the First World War had been withheld from us as children. I discussed why this happened with Gerry and we came to the conclusion that there was a family breakdown because of many years of separation. This impacted our own parents who were children during that war and its aftermath. Then our parents became young adults in the prosperous 1920’s, and matured as adults in the 1930’s as the world again descended into war. So this history is as much theirs as my own. I was an infant when the Second World War started. My mother and I were quickly evacuated from London to live in a Welsh farmhouse, while my father was stationed at the Royal Air Force communications centre near London during the battles and bombing blitz. When the bombing eased off in the summer of 1941 we returned to our riverside home just fifteen miles west of central London, but the Air Force moved my father a thousand miles away to an anti-submarine base in the Shetland Islands. In 1942 and 43, while there was daily news of overseas battles, and RAF bombers attacking Germany, my childhood unfolded in a quiet but frugal life with my mother beside the River Thames. But in the spring of 1944 there were warnings of a new attack by missiles on London and Mum decided we would move away to my grandmother’s home near Cardiff in South Wales. But we had to wait until she could get train tickets I will start reading from Chapter 10, Escape from Missiles: “As Churchill said, London was a target area eighteen miles wide by twenty miles deep which they could hardly miss. But once launched toward London, the V1 flying bomb controls followed a magnetic compass course and it dived when a propeller device  measured a calculated distance. So its point of impact could have an error of many miles depending on wind strength and direction. On 13th June 1944 there was a radio news report that districts in London were hit by V1 flying bombs. One came down in Bethnal Green. It killed six people and injured nine. The others caused no casualties. Waiting for our travel date, I went out on the riverbank with my fishing rod. One cloudy morning I heard a distant high pitched buzzing sound. I’ll never forget that throbbing sound steadily coming nearer. I knew right away it was one of those flying bombs, a buzz bomb, or doodlebug, as the Americans called them. I stood there without any feeling of fear, saying to myself, “keep going, keep going, keep going”.  It passed by unseen and the sound diminished -away for the bomb to fall somewhere else.  We were definitely in the danger area. When the day came for us to travel, I remember that Mum and I had only hand bags of things we would need on the journey. Since the blitz ended in 1941 most rail lines had been repaired and were operating. So we travelled by electric train from Egham to Clapham Junction and by Underground from there to Paddington station in London. I will never forget the scene at Paddington where we stood on the platform with about two thousand people waiting for the train to Cardiff. As we stood there the air raid siren started up with its warning of a few minutes to find shelter. But on this Paddington platform nobody moved. A silence descended on the crowd and Mum took my hand. We all stood there just with the sound of our own breathing while the minutes slowly passed wondering if we would hear that dreaded sound of a flying bomb approaching. Not a single person wanted to risk losing their place on the train. So the crowd just stood there. Probably some prayers were being whispered but there was no panic, just a quiet apprehension. It was the bravest thing I ever experienced and I will never forget it. After what seemed a very long time, perhaps about fifteen minutes, the all clear sounded and we could breathe a collective sigh of relief. Presently a little shunting engine approached pulling a fifteen coach train into our platform. It came to a stop, a whistle sounded and we quickly got into a carriage.” When the war ended in 1945 we moved back to London but my father did not return until October. He did not stay for long because the only employment offered took him away to a place where there was no housing due to destruction by bombing. It turned into mostly being separated from his wife and family for a seventh year. Determined to be together my parents moved us into an abandoned Air Force barrack where we endured the brutal winter weather of 1946-47. Fortunately we were rescued from that awful place, and we moved three more times before Uncle George invited my father into his photography business in Gloucestershire, ninety miles west of London. But the many years of difficulties with employment and shortages took a toll on the family relationships, which resulted in my parents decision to leave England and move to Canada. My father was 44, my mother was 38, and I was 13 when we sailed from Southampton on the Tenth of October 1952. I completed the draft of this family history in 2021 and Pam took on the editing task, which resulted in many revisions and much checking of sources. We were not ready to think about publishing until last fall when we met with Patty Osborne who designed our previous books. She set up the design and introduced me to Michal Kozlowski who did the page by page details to integrate the text with the 630 images that I had chosen. It took several more months to have a copy ready for the proof reading by Caroline Metcalfe, and more time for the corrections. Finally it was delivered to Janet at Speedbolt Printing and she delivered the pages to Paulette at Rasmussen Bindery, all in North Vancouver, where I picked up these beautifully completed books a few days ago. The book is not available for commercial sale. I have paid for the deign and production of just fifty copies for free distribution to family members, contributors, and supporters.   And also to community organizations that welcome research and learning. After the Postal Strike gets settled, books will be on their way to recipients across Canada, as well as in the United States, Britain, Holland, Switzerland and Norway. The completion of this family history was made possible by a tremendous amount of support by many volunteers who encouraged and helped me, both here on the Coast, elsewhere in Canada, and in the UK. My heartfelt thanks to you all. And a special remembrance for my cousin Gerry who perhaps is up there somewhere watching over us. Thank you. I first met Deanna Knight at the Gibsons Jazz festival many years ago when she was performing with her group, “The Hot Club of Mars”. It was exciting music which I think was in the style of Django Reinhart in Paris of the 1930’s at a club called “Le Jazz Hot”. Deanna Knight and Budge Schalke have prepared a beautiful program for us with music from the eras that I have written about. Over to you!