Reflections of a Canadian Churchman

Athena and I were talking recently about how “The War” informed life for our generation. While it is true that we were both born a good twenty-five years after the end of World War II, it formed a strong part of our shared cultural narrative as Gen-Xers. The war was ever-present in the conversations of our elders – in their storytelling, in their hopes and fears, and in their response to challenges of the day. On the one hand, it seemed to us that it had just happened and that we had missed it, and on the other that it was already an event of mythic proportions. My maternal grandfather, Frank Rason, was member of the Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (R.C.E.M.E.) and served in England, Belgium, and the Netherlands. In England he met my grandmother, Joan Edwards, and married her before the war was over, sending her home to become one of the many war brides who, barely adults, left all they had to begin a new life in a new land. Thus, our family came into being because o...