War and Politics
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- Medium: Video
- Owner: Veterans Affairs Canada
- Duration: 2:30
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War and Politics
Some of the ships on which troops left were provided at no cost to the Canadians. Mr. Jobin gives us his impressions on this topic.
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
War and Politics
The war cost us Canadians a lot. And besides that, we had to pay for two aircraft carriers and in the Canadian navy, the only aircraft carriers we had . . . we had the Nabob, Puncher, which remained. . . British Home Fleet, the Warrior, which was the first Canadian aircraft carrier with a completely Canadian crew, the Bonaventure and then the “Maggie” – Magnificent. Those were the five aircraft carriers. We don’t have any more of them. Why did we have them? Because of the cold war. They patrolled the Atlantic [inaudible] there was going to be a war at certain point . . . It didn’t happen. That’s why we had the aircraft carriers. If it weren’t for that, we wouldn’t have had them. They were expensive. 40 years after having helped the Russians . . . the Cold War The Russians gave us - to the Nabob - a medal of thanks. Listen to this, politics . . . I received . . . we were supposed to receive this medal at the [inaudible] Club in Montréal. But unfortunately, the [inaudible] Club is in a federal building. At that time, the cold war was barely going. The federal government here said, “No Russians are going to enter a federal building, we’re practically at war.” There were thirty of us who were receiving the medal from the Russians in the Montréal region. There aren’t many in Canada who got it. So they came and negotiated with the Legion in Lasalle. I get a phone call, “Jobin, show up in Lasalle. The Russian Ambassador and his entourage – those guys are never alone – is gonna be there.” So, for the 40th anniversary of the Russians’ victory over fascism, Nazism, whatever, we got it. At the 60th anniversary, this year, I received another . . . at the 60th . . . It’s really beautiful. I stopped wearing it. It’s all in Russian and it’s not a medal of bravery, it’s a medal of thanks for having helped them . . . supplied them with military equipment because they were facing German divisions. It was nice of them.
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