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TSN Senior Reporter

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For the past few months, I’ve spent a number of weekend mornings chatting with a new friend.

I met Bill Whiteside in February and we hit it off right away. While the snow fell outside and the temperatures were pulling the mercury to the bottom of the thermometer, we sat in front of the big windows where he lives, me with a coffee and him with a cup of tea.

There was a lot of talk about golf. Bill had been a passionate but perhaps not great golfer for most of his life. We dissected Tiger’s win at the Masters. We talked about Corey Conners’ victory at the Valero Texas Open. He asked about Mike Weir and Adam Hadwin.

We also chatted about our own golf, and how we loved playing the crazy game with its highs and lows. We shared great moments on the course and some not-so-great ones, too. Most of all, we just laughed, as guys do.

At 93, Bill stopped playing about five years ago when his body wouldn’t co-operate with his swing. He’d been a member at Scarboro G&CC in Toronto for more than half a century. Folks there have a lot of great stories about Bill. They will tell you he was always front and centre, always smiling, always the life of the party and always asking about everyone’s round. He wanted to know how they played. He genuinely cared about the guys on men’s night and the women at the mixed events.

Everyone’s favourite memory of Bill, however, was at Christmas. For as long as anyone can remember, he played Santa Claus. It’s easy to see why he’d fit that role. He’s jolly and carries a big smile and just seems to have a joyous passion for life, even at his advanced age.

Bill is a guy who embraces life. He lives large, is always ready for fun and always ready to share a laugh.

******

In 1944, Bill was 17. Like every teenager, he was learning about life as he went from a kid to an adult. He went to high school at Malvern Collegiate in Toronto’s east end and, like a lot of his friends, decided to enlist.

The war had been going on for almost five years and while the horrors were well known, there was also something about wearing a uniform that might appeal to the girls. Bill didn’t want to miss out on what he saw as a grand adventure.

He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and within a few months he was in England, training as part of a crew that would fly on the Lancaster. That plane was a workhorse, built to carry the heaviest bombs the Allies put into use.

It used four massive engines that would carry the hulking 25,000-kg plane down the runway, almost impossibly lifting it into the air. It first saw action in 1943 and by the end of the war Lancasters had flown 156,000 sorties.

While the plane played a vital role in the Allied victory in the Second World War, it came with a price. The Lancaster was one of the most dangerous places to be. Out of 125,000 crew members who flew in the Lancaster, more than 55,000 were killed. Another 8,000 were injured while 10,000 ended up as prisoners of war.

Bill joined a seven-man crew, taking the position as a mid-upper gunner. He sat on a triangle of canvass strung up in a turret partway back on the top of the plane, looking out through a plastic dome. His job was to scour the skies, looking for the Luftwaffe planes that would try to pick off the bombers before they could reach their targets.

He flew only 12 sorties in his career, but each one came with the highest degree of risk. Those include runs in support of Operation Overlord, the D-Day invasion, 75 years ago today.

When we think of that invasion that turned the course of the war, it’s mostly about soldiers jumping from landing crafts and storming the beaches of Normandy. But the RCAF played a vital role. Canadian planes did everything from drop paratroopers behind the lines in the darkness before the invasion to patrol the skies over the beaches to protect the soldiers below. The night before the Lancasters also flew over the beaches, pounding the German coastal defences with thousands of tons of explosives.

Bill’s crew was part of that. He also made one sortie in the days leading up to D-Day, dropping one payload on a German submarine base.

“We tried to take those out of commission,” he told me one Saturday morning. “We couldn’t have those around during the invasion.”

Later, he said, their sorties were mopping up runs, keeping the Germans on the run. But every one was a risk.

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Today, Bill lives in the Veteran’s Centre at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto along with roughly 475 vets, many who played a part in D-Day. More than a million Canadians served in the Second World War. As of April 1, there were just 61,300 left alive. Their average age is 92. A number are over 100.

Bill has good days and a few bad ones as he battles dementia. His daughters visit almost daily, guiding his wheelchair to some of the many events held there or to one of the sunny windows that look out onto the gardens surrounding the facility. Once in a while, they sneak him a shot of rum, which is against the rules of course, but at 93, who is going to stop him? He gives out a big smile at the taste of it, enjoying his libation.

On the wall in his room, he has dozens of pictures. There he is at the golf club: On the course, at parties and, of course, as Santa Claus. There are also shots of his family. His wife, Mary, is in every one of them. They met on a high school ski trip after Bill returned from the war. Perhaps that uniform worked its trick after all. They were inseparable for the next 50 years until she passed away in 2003.

There is also a picture of a Lancaster. A few weeks ago, he pointed out his position, tracing his hand down the top of the plane to the bubble where he sat so many years ago.

Below that is a shot of his aircrew, some kneeling in the front row, others standing behind. If it weren’t for the uniforms and the plane behind them, they could be a hockey team or maybe a football squad. They’re all smiling and looking so very, very young.

And then there’s a shot of Bill alone, looking snappy in his crisp uniform, a beret sitting angled on his head. Looking at the photo, I think about him climbing up into his canvass seat in the Lancaster, bracing himself as the plane rumbled down the runway, taking off on another mission. He knew his odds of returning to that same tarmac weren’t great. And if he did return, he knew that there would be friends in other planes who wouldn’t. But he chose to go. He knew the importance of what he was doing. It was his duty.

Seventy-five years after D-Day, it’s important to recognize and remember people such as Bill. We owe our veterans more than just our gratitude. They deserve respect and admiration and, of course, our deep appreciation.

 

*****

There are only two Lancasters left in the world that are airworthy. One is in England, the other at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, Ont. Just after noon on Thursday, as part of a D-Day celebration, that one will complete a flyover at the Hamilton Golf & Country Club, site of this week’s RBC Canadian Open.

I will look up at that plane and think of Bill, of him sitting at his position, flying with his crew en route to their target. I’m not sure how they gathered the courage to do it, but I’m awfully glad they did.