83 The Royal Canadian Legion MANITOBA & NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO COMMAND www.mbnwo.ca CLARK, Stephen David “Steve” WWII Steve was born in Kinosota, Manitoba in 1925. At age eighteen, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve at HMCS Chippawa, in Winnipeg. It was 1943 and by this time guns were being put on Merchant ships. After six weeks of basic training, Steve was sent to Victoria, BC, after volunteering to join a D.E.M.S. (Defensively Equipped Merchant Ship). He trained on the gunnery range and mine sweepers, then sailed on several merchant ships: S.S. Manitou Park, S.S. Queens’ Park, S.S. Tobiotic Park, to name a few. The Seamans’ duty at sea was mainly to stand a four-hour watch, twice a day, for signs of a submarine or any vessel that could do damage to their ship. Steve sailed on freighters, going as far north as Skagway, Alaska, then south to San Francisco. After a few months he was put on the longer run freighters from Vancouver, where they would travel down through the Panama Canal, up to New York, then convoy to England. Steve said of this convoy, “We left New York in the largest convoy ever to leave that area - 158 ships. We had merchant ships which had been fitted with an aircraft landing deck, similar to an aircraft carrier. Swordfish planes, with double wings, would take off, circle around the convoy, search for enemy submarines, and land back on the ship at speeds as low as 35 mph.” Most of their trips were with a convoy, but they also made solo trips from Vancouver, through the Panama Canal, to England. The last trip he was on left from Vancouver, headed for Australia. They had trouble with a leaky ship so then had to pull into Pearl Harbour for repairs. As Steve put it, “There were buoys marking a safe passage through all the sunken U.S. war ships, which were bombed and sunk by the Japanese Air Force on December 7, 1944. Some of the ships were partly out of the water...after two weeks...none of us Canadians were sorry to be on our way and see the last of Pearl Harbour.” Upon sailing across the Equator for the first time, a Navy initiation custom took place, which would have been termed “hazing” by today’s standards. At the end of it, they did receive an official certificate stating they had crossed the Equator, signed by the ship’s Captain...as well as an unwanted buzz cut in the shape of a cross, and a very clean face!! This did help to alleviate the boredom of a long trip. On arrival at Melbourne, the Canadians were treated well. Then they were off to Ceylon, and both sides of India; Bombay and Calcutta. Steve saw the Taj Mahal. They sailed on to Durban, South Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope, and up the west side of Africa. They were somewhere in the South Atlantic, headed for the U.S. east coast when they got word the war was over. Soon after this, they got orders to heave all their ammunition overboard in 20 fathoms of water, which they did. They returned to base at Vancouver via the Panama Canal. Steve was discharged in 1946. One particular thought that he shared: “Sometimes while at sea we’d think how alone we were out here, nothing but water and how fragile our ship was, only three inches thick. We’d hear how fast a torpedoed ship would go down. It got on our nerves at times. We’d take our life jackets to bed with us. Twice, while on watch, I spotted a lifeboat and some stuff floating on the water. We circled but couldn’t find any survivors.” Steve’s biggest problem after the war was trying to get his life started on “some medals, $365.00 and a handshake.” Small tractors cost $1,200 and were in short supply. He settled for an old Case tractor. He also bought some heifer calves. In 1947, Steve married Margaret Warnock. They lived in two unlined granaries on a quarter section he had bought before leaving for the war. He did some fur trapping in the winter and trapped muskrats in the spring. Margaret would skin the rats and stretch the skins. The first day he caught fourteen. They sold for $2.00 each. That was good money in those days. The babies started to arrive: six daughters and one son. The Clarks tried their hands at running a small store and post office for eight years; they left the farm after a devasting fire in 1949. In 1959, they moved to Yorkton, where Steve drove a mail truck. He also trucked potash from Esterhazy to the States. After one or two more episodes of operating hotels, they sold their last hotel and came back to the farm in Basswood, where they remained and farmed until Margaret had to enter the Minnedosa PCH and Steve moved into a small home in Minnedosa. A passion of Steve’s in his spare time was tinkering with old radios. He’d search local farm auctions to find them, then rewire and refinish them, making them brand new. He then gave these treasures away to family and friends. He took up riding a unicycle in his later years, thanks to a birthday gift from his children. He also owned an electric powered car when no one had even heard of such a thing! He had rebuilt it, of course. Steve moved into the Minnedosa Personal Care Home, a number of years after Margaret passed away. He died in 2018. Steve received the Canadian Volunteer Service Medal, Atlantic Star, Pacific Star with Burma Bar, 1939-1945 Star and War Medal 1939-1945.
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