Coming Home
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- Medium: Video
- Owner: Veterans Affairs Canada
- Duration: 1:37
- Copyright / Permission to Reproduce
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Details
Coming Home
Mr. Jobin is back home. He is used to the small houses and barracks in Europe, so when he comes back to such a large house as his own, it was difficult to get used to.
Guy Jobin
Mr. Jobin’s father was a chemist for a mill in Chandler, in the Gaspé. During the Depression, his father left to go work in Masson, in the Outaouais Region, and the family joined him 18 months later. They settled in Buckingham and when war was declared young Guy Jobin, a lover of ships, wanted to enlist in the Navy. He did his basic training in Québec and then went to Halifax to learn to fire guns before being sent to British Columbia. His group of Canadians left on the British aircraft carrier HMS Nabob. The ship went down the Pacific coast, crossed the Panama Canal and stopped in Virginia before arriving in England, at Liverpool. There they found the remains of a city damaged by 9 days German bombings. The Nabob was active in the British Isles throughout the war. During a mission to Scapa Flow in northern Scotland, the boat was hit by a torpedo. Upon his return to Canada, Mr. Jobin was hospitalized for awhile.
Transcription
Coming Home
When I arrived at my home in Buckingham, I entered the kitchen, then the living room and I had to go outside after about half an hour. I wasn’t used to being in a ten by ten or twelve by twelve house, y’know, big spaces. At some point, I was sitting in the dining room, I was talking with my brothers and sisters, father and mother, and I had to go outside. I felt squeezed because I hadn’t been in a room the size of a room like here. I would be sitting there and at a certain point I wouldn’t feel right. I said to my father, “I’m gonna go outside a bit and get some air”. The next day, I was OK. But the first moments, the first hour there, I felt this pressure because the barracks are so big, and maybe I was the only one who felt like that but there were others to who felt like that, too. You were always in camp buildings, trains, y’know, trucks, whatever. All of a sudden, I’m in a bedroom, a dining room with my brothers and sisters, father and mother. You’re proud to be back home, so much that you, you just don’t know how to. . . How do I explain it? The next day . . . It takes time to realize that it’s over. That’s it, I think. It’s not easy.
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