So, here we go. First stab at this. Meet Pickles. His picture is sitting in my inbox right now and he was great uncle on my paternal side. My dad's uncle. My grandfather's youngest brother. He died over Germany during WWII as his plane was shot down by the Germans (was that obvious?). Every picture of him looks different and this one looks like none of the others. This was his Miner's card that I suppose would get him into the mines. It looks more like a prison card if you ask me. I can't identify really anyone in my family that looks like him. I think I've seen my dad with that squint. But more likely due to his need of bifocals.
Pickles' age is a little unclear on this certificate. He must have been 21 in 1937, not 1940. He died in 1942 at the age of 27. He made 14 operational flights as a Flight Sargent with the Royal Canadian Air Force between March and November of 1942. Two streets that I know of were named after him. In fact I lived on one of them and went to a few open houses on the one in Transcona. When we moved onto that street bearing my very own last name, it made for nice town gossip. "Oh, look they move onto the street and then they rename it after them!" Yeah, the timing wasn't so great for either our move or the renaming of streets after war heroes. I hear that Pickles was a great hockey player and I'm sure he would have enjoyed to live out his life with a wife, children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. His name has been tampered into cenotaphs in Sioux Lookout, Transcona and I hear even Togo. It would have been nice to have known him.
signed, the willow
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