Spring 2023 Newsletter
The Real Deal
In early May I received a very upsetting phone call: Doreen Jones had passed away.
Doreen and her husband Walter had taken me in, almost like a stray child, two decades earlier.
Except I wasn’t a stray child. I was a reporter producing a documentary series on a largely forgotten aspect of Canada’s involvement in the Second World War, and they had allowed me and my crew into their Ottawa home for two days to interview them.
Walter had been a RCAF Pilot in Ferry Command, a wartime operation that ensured a steady supply of aircraft to Britain - aircraft which were desperately needed in the early years of the Second World War. Ferry Command pilots flew planes of all shapes and sizes from Canada overseas, catching a ride back on westward-bound ships or cargo planes, then starting all over again.
It sounds routine. It was anything but.
Aviation technology and meteorological science were still in their infancy then. Flying planes long distances across the North Atlantic had not been done before outside of the summer season, with its lighter skies and kinder winds. Ferry Command pilots like Walter needed to be resourceful, skilled, and very brave.
Walter was all those things, and a brilliant raconteur to boot. He told tales of flying with one hand while attempting to scrape ice off the outside of the cockpit windows with the other. Or taking off from Gander, seeing the dark cliffs of Newfoundland fade into the background and wondering what perils lay ahead on his long journey…hostile aircraft, ferocious weather, equipment failure. He risked his life for people he would never meet because it was what was needed, because it was the right thing to do. After the war ended he settled down with his childhood sweetheart Doreen, and together they raised a family. The “Twelfth of Never” was their song, and Doreen, an accomplished pianist, played it for us while our cameras rolled. Naturally, we opened our documentary with a few strains of that tune.
During our two days together, Walter, Doreen, and I bonded like long-lost souls. Afterwards we stayed in close touch, speaking on the phone every few months, exchanging cards on special occasions, and Walter wrote me letters as well. When I began writing my first novel I mostly kept it to myself, but I told a few people including Walter and Doreen. From then on every call, every card, every letter contained words of encouragement for me to keep going, keep writing. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t family or a long-time friend – I was a fellow human being who needed support, and because it was the right thing to do.
In a world with so much turmoil – civil wars, climate disasters, poverty, disease, power-hungry bullies – the heart yearns for goodness…for good people. My two cents, but I think it’s one of the reasons why we are so obsessed, at least in Western popular culture, with superheroes. I also think we are searching for our obsession in the wrong place, because the superheroes I’ve met, the ones like Walter and Doreen, were not loud chest-beaters, were not young, beautiful, and lithe, and would never equate worth with owning expensive stuff like four thousand-dollar purses or luxury cars.
Walter died in 2016. Doreen passed away this May. I consider it an honour and a privilege to have known them, to have spent time with the real deal – the real superheroes.
Doreen and Walter Jones, on the occasion of their 64th wedding anniversary