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Description
Mr. Danson remembers attending church on Sunday with the Christians even though he was Jewish.
Barnet J (Barney) Danson
M. Danson est né en Ontario, en 1921. Avant la guerre, il travaillait pour Columbia Pictures. En tant que Juif, M. Danson était bien conscient du climat politique en Europe. Quelque chose lui disait que la guerre était imminente, et l'envie d'aller se battre l'a pris. Il s'est donc enrôlé, en temps de paix, dans l'espoir de suivre un entraînement et d'être fin prêt advenant le déclenchement de la guerre. M. Danson était officier d'infanterie dans le Queen's Own Rifles of Canada. À l'automne 1944, il fut blessé et dut mettre fin à sa participation à la guerre. Il devint par la suite un homme d'affaires prospère. Plus tard, il fit son entrée sur la scène politique et servit à titre de ministre de la Défense au sein du gouvernement Trudeau.
Transcription
Funny story, cause Freddy and I were Jewish, and we'd have church parades on Sunday, and in Aldershot, there weren't too many reformed synagogues. And so, we had our choice between going to the Anglican church parade or the RC church parade, or just not going, I think that may have been an option, but we never considered it an option, we just had to get to God somehow. And we always had an Anglican padre who was as much our padre as he was anybody's. Even though, you know, they had, on our dog tags, your religion. They have RC for Roman Catholic, UC for United Church, CE for the Church of England, and OD for all the rest of us. Very upsetting for a member of the senior religion to be just an other denomination, and we were. Anyway, we used to go and we used to sit side by side, and listen to the prayers, and we used to edit them. We would leave out the words we couldn't say, and do what we could say. We wanted to be one of the boys. It was pretty difficult when it got to honour the Christian soldiers because there was just so much enthusiasm in the crowd you just had to join in and belt it out. But we managed somehow. But as I go back to our regimental church parades at St. Paul's church in Toronto here, and read the Apostle's creed, I have no idea how we ever did get through that. But maybe that is one of the casualties of war.