Photo supplied.
Susan Lasch on Remembrance Day in 2013 at her late husband’s memorial.
Susan grew up in the Larkhall area of Scotland.
Working in the coal mines had taken a toll on her father who passed away when she was 13 years old, leaving behind a wife and six children. While young men left the community to join the war efforts, other children arrived, being sent north for safety. In addition to severe food rationing, life included blacked-out windows, gas masks for everyone including babies. Because the town was located along a German flight path there were frequent visits to bomb shelters. Barrage Balloons, raised to protect the skies under Glasgow, were common sights in the community.
Susan remembers a large influx of young men, many of them from Newfoundland. These men paid their own way to Britain to join the war effort because Newfoundland had not yet joined Canada. Other male visitors to the community were Italian prisoners of war who provided farm help to local farms who were short-handed due to the war effort.
Susan met her husband-to-be Peter in 1942, when she was on break from her nursing student duties in Glasgow. In true Canadian fashion, he insisted on escorting Susan and her sister back to the hospital, and they met for a date the following day. Six months later they were married, but soon after he was shipped off but was able to return when their first daughter arrived to meet her. He then left for the Pacific Ocean and did not come back into the lives of his wife and daughter for another year. Shortly after the baby’s first birthday, Susan and her daughter boarded a train in Liverpool and then a ship to complete their two-week journey to Canada.
They were met in Windsor by Peter and his family accompanied by a welcoming party of 50 other friends. It was an auspicious beginning to her Canadian adventure. The family relocated to Peterborough in 1958. Susan’s family now consists of eight children, 20 grandchildren and 14 great grandchildren. The family is proudly Canadian, but honour their matriarch’s Scottish background by playing bagpipes, drums and performing highland dancing. KG
