As Canada observes Remembrance Day, Sara Greenblatt is remembering the wartime service of her mother, who wasn’t in the armed forces but provided meaningful aid to members who trained in Moncton, as well as to their anxious loved ones around the globe.
“My late mother’s small acts of kindness and compassion … bore a mighty and positive impact,” said the Halifax-based retired lawyer.
Like many of her contemporaries, Ann Mendelson Greenblatt was called upon to shoulder some very grown-up wartime responsibilities.
Her particular call to serve was as manager of a servicemen’s centre in Moncton.
Ann Mendelson Greenblatt was a teenager in Moncton during the Second World War. (Submitted by Sara Greenblatt.)
This centre, and others like it across Canada, was established by the Canadian Jewish Congress to provide a welcoming and comfortable space for people of any faith who had been deployed to the area for military training.
In the Moncton area, they are said to have numbered in the tens of thousands.
One trainee arriving in the city from heavily bombed and blacked-out England is said to have remarked, “Wow, this is how to live,” upon seeing street lights on and people walking about, said David Hughes, director of the New Brunswick Military History Museum.
Canada was the main hub for British Commonwealth air training during the war, and New Brunswick had five of the country’s 107 air-crew training schools, said Hughes said.
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