Four years after the Second World War started, a local teacher serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) penned a plea to local councils to adopt an orphan bomber squadron.
Half a century later, a gunner from the highly successful group forged a serendipitous friendship with a proud Porcupine native, though it took a decade to realize the connection.
The story starts in November 1943 with flight Lt. Don Simpson of the newly created 433 Squadron. Simpson had been a Grade 8 teacher at South Porcupine Public School and asked The Porcupine District — the townships of Tisdale and Whitney, and the Town of Timmins — to take the section under their wing.
“If this were done our name would be ‘The Porcupine Squadron’ and the porcupine would be on our squadron crest. The name is an apt one, inasmuch as the Porcupine can cause a good deal of discomfort to its enemies, as we hope to do to ours,” wrote Simpson in a letter printed on the front page of the Porcupine Advance on Dec. 23, 1943.
Simpson’s offer was accepted and the Porcupine Squadron was born.
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Over the next two years, a local committee raised money and collected supplies for their adopted squadron.
In April 1944, a concert with a "splendid programme" was advertised to raise funds to provide comforts for the Porcupine Squadron No. 433. In July of that year, tag days in South Porcupine, Whitney and Schumacher brought in $267.36 for the bomber squadron.
When it wrapped up on June 11, 1945, the Timmins organization had shipped 320,000 cigarettes, 26,208 chocolate bars, 12,000 packages of gum, 5,028 toilet articles, 1,500 articles of clothing such as socks and pyjamas, 25 pounds of pipe tobacco, and a “large amount” of reading material.
The late gunner Harold Reid was one of the men who served on the Porcupine Squadron.
Born in Acton, Ont., he enlisted in Regina, Sask., in October 1943 — four weeks after his 18th birthday. While he wanted to be a pilot, the training for that role took a while and, wanting to get into service, he settled on being a mid-upper gunner on a Lancaster bomber.
Long after hanging up his active gear, Reid and his wife, Mildred, moved to Cambridge for their retirement after living in Mississauga for over 30 years.
That’s where, in 1994, he met Robert Merritt, who was born and raised in Porcupine.
Merritt was the reverend at the First United church in Cambridge and the Reids chose to worship at his congregation.
When Reid died in 2017, Merritt spoke at his funeral and shared his eulogy with TimminsToday to help tell this story, and the many unexpected connections to the Porcupine Squadron.
A decade after becoming friends with Reid, one Sunday Meritt mentioned a trip to Porcupine for the Whitney reunion in the early 2000s.
“He told me that my little town in Northern Ontario had adopted his Squadron as their own and they flew as the ‘Fighting Porcupines’ or ‘Porkies’ as they were more affectionately known,” he wrote.
“Harold told me that he had never met anyone from Porcupine before. And if I wouldn’t mind, could I bring greetings to my hometown on behalf of a crewman who was so grateful for their support.”
Reid wanted "the good people of Porcupine" to know how much their support meant during the war.
“Can you imagine an 18-year-old signing up to be a mid-ship gunner on one of the world’s most iconic warplanes? It was a dangerous job to do. Harold told me that knowing that support of a town in Northern Ontario flew on every mission made all the difference in the world to him,” said Merritt.
“I was privileged to honour Harold’s request 58 years after the war ended. It was good for the people of Porcupine to hear his thank you. Some at the reunion remembered the story well.”
The 433 Squadron was formed in September 1943 in Skipton-on-Swale, Yorkshire, England. It flew 2,316 missions and had a 91 per cent success rate, according to the RCAF.
It disbanded at the end of the war and has been activated and dissolved several times since. It’s currently an RCAF unit at CFB Bagotville in Quebec.
Though the years, multiple unlikely connections to the Porcupine squadron have come to fruition for Merritt.
His father served in the RCAF and while he personally doesn’t have a military background, three of his four children were air cadets.
As chaplain of an air cadet squadron, Merritt met a former Porcupine Squadron commanding officer, Paul Kissman.
“(His) grandparents were German. During the Second World War their home town was bombed out causing them to flee. They were bombed by the Porcupine Squadron on one of Harold’s crew’s mission runs,” said Merritt.
“Ironically, (his) grandparents came to Canada after the war and began raising their family, which eventually provided them with a grandson who became the commanding officer of Squadron 433 — the very same Squadron that had forced them to evacuate their homes.”
Within a month of that meeting, Merritt met a then-RCAF commander.
Merritt mentioned his connection with Reid and the Porcupine Squadron, which led him to discover that the commander was also a Porcupine Squadron alumni during its stint in Cold Lake, Alberta.
“To my greater surprise he asked me to share a message to my friend Harold telling him that he was going to recommission the 433 Squadron,” he said.
“It was his personal pleasure to reinstate the Porcupine Squadron because he had been the commanding officer that had decommissioned it in 2005. It was my joy and pleasure to phone and tell Harold that the General was bringing back his Squadron.”
