193 In June 1943, the crew of the Morden took a well-earned break as the ship received a refit in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. In July, after workups at Pictou, Morden sailed for Plymouth, England, to join EG 9, but the navy had other plans for my father. On August 14, he was assigned to HMCS Kings, the naval officers’ training school in Halifax, to take the Long N (navigation) Course. HMCS Kings was commissioned in 1941, temporarily occupying the facilities of the University of King’s College. The training school offered 12-week courses in various aspects of seamanship to young officers, and later a 20-week course that focussed on anti-submarine operations. Interestingly, German propaganda during the war frequently included bogus lists of sunk allied ships. HMCS Kings was circulated as a name of an active vessel by the RCN. When the German’s announced that HMCS Kings had been sunk, much of the German reporting was discredited. Meanwhile, Morden continued to have an eventful time at sea, with more rescues and one particularly notable military engagement in the Bay of Biscay in September 1943. On 29 June 1945, the corvette was paid off at Sorel, Quebec, and scrapped in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1946. Today, Morden’s ship’s bell and wheel are preserved in a display about the vessel’s proud history in the Morden Civic Centre in Morden, Manitoba: On 9 November 1943, my father was appointed to HMCS St. Boniface (J332), a newly commissioned Algerine-class minesweeper named after the town of St. Boniface, Manitoba. Dad joined the ship for workups in Pictou, Nova Scotia which ran through November and December. After workups, St. Boniface was assigned to Western Escort Force W5 as S.O. (Senior Officer Ship). In a convoy, the escort group commander would sail with the S.O., and it so happened that the officer in question was Dad’s old skipper, John James Hodgkinson, now a lieutenant-commander. In mid-April 1944, St. Boniface was reassigned to Western Escort Force W4, where it remained for the rest of Dad’s time aboard. HMCS St. Boniface Officers on the St. Boniface, April 1944 Dad (front row, 2nd from right) and LCdr. Hodgkinson (front row, middle)
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