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Description
Mr. Este explains the comradery amongst his fellow soldiers and how he dealt with racial encounters.
Gus Este
Mr. Gus Este was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1931. He is the oldest child with two brothers and two sisters. His father worked as a porter on Canadian Pacific Railways. After attending school and achieving grade 11, Mr. Este decided to find employment onboard ships as a skipper. In 1950, Mr. Este made the decision to join the Canadian Army Special Force obtaining medical assistant trades with training in Camp Borden. He then went to Seattle, Washington and received advanced training in the medical field and gave service during the Korean War effort as a medical assistant. He was discharged from the service and worked at Canada Post for three years. Mr. Este later decided to re-join the service in postal corp and held rank of corporal participating in tours to Egypt and Germany. In 1987, he retired with recognition of 33 years of military service.
Transcription
All Canadians got along well with each other. The incidents that I encountered were when we went to Fort Lewis, Washington, because the American forces were still segregated at that time. And when we went to cities like Tacoma, Seattle, Portland, Oregon, I’d go with my buddies, there weren’t many black guys around. So I’d go with them and we’d go into an establishment, a restaurant or a bar or something and they’d say I wasn’t allowed in. So my buddies would start fighting. So I eventually got wise and started taking them to the black establishments where they had no problem