Description
Mr. Heron explains his duties as part of the Signal Corps and his interest in technical work.
Roy Heron
Mr. Roy Heron was born in January 1920, in Kingston, Jamaica. The Heron family, was of elite stature, owning several Islands of Jamaica, and provided Mr. Heron with private school. At age 11, his family moved him to Cleveland, Ohio to live with his aunt. Mr. Heron desire was to become an electrician, but while attending technical school he faced racial discrimination. He left and attended academic school, graduated and moved to New York. In 1940, Mr. Heron joined the Norwegian Merchant Marine and after two years came to Canada and joined the army with the Signal Corps. In 1946, he was discharged from the army and returned to the Canadian merchant marine for a few years. Mr. Heron returned to Montreal, Quebec and worked in the construction industry. He married and raised a family.
Transcript
And from Simcoe, we went to England aboard the signals and the ordinance joined together and created Royal Canadian Electrical Mechanical Engineers (RCEME). I had a certain amount of technical background in high school so when I went into dealing with telephones and radios and stuff like that, there was no problems, that was great for me. It was all the job that I had to think about and creating and doing things. Nothing was the same everyday, everything, something else new within the technical field. Also I did was maintenance and fixing things in a Cove Camp in England, and I decided that I wanted to get more experience to join so the outfit I was in never left England. I changed from that into ENSA, that goes and shows movies and everything so I had a chance to go to the continent.