REGINA—It was during his first year of study at the University of Saskatchewan in pursuit of an agricultural degree, as World War II engulfed the world, that Osborne Lakness felt the call to join the military.
“My friends got together and said, well what are we doing here? Our [other] friends are going to serve the country and we weren’t. So all four of us decided to join the Navy, and we did,” Lakness, 99, said in an interview.
Lakness, who grew up with a brother and four sisters on their parents’ homestead near Govan, Saskatchewan, enrolled at the HMCS Unicorn, a naval recruitment centre in Saskatoon. During World War II, 3,573 officers and non-commissioned members enlisted and received their initial training at the centre.
“They said that the Prairie boys made the best sailors. I don’t know why. We'd never seen the ocean before,” he recalled with a laugh. “I was quartermaster there for about 10 months.”
But Lakness didn’t join the Navy to stay in Saskatchewan.
“I was kind of itching to get out of there, so I asked for a draft and they gave me a draft to Cornwallis. I wanted to get away from the barracks. It was such a different atmosphere when you got onboard a ship. You were a big family.”
While at Cornwallis, Lakness asked servicemen whom he should talk to for an appointment to a ship.
“This is what I was told—if you slip the writer [the person responsible] some money, he will get you a draft. And I said, ‘Oh I’m going to try that,’” he said.
Lakness began 71 years of marriage to his wife Reta on Nov. 18, 1943—somewhat at her insistence.
Crossing the Atlantic 7 Times
The St. Stephen was named for a town in New Brunswick and one of the 60 river-class frigates Canada ordered for construction. The ship was built on Vancouver Island in Esquimalt, B.C., and commissioned on July 28, 1944, in the same city. It served as a convoy escort for ships in the Battle of the Atlantic.“When we left Vancouver, we went down through the Pacific, of course, and through the [Panama] Canal, and back to Halifax. And then from Halifax, our first trip was across the North Atlantic Ocean,” Lakness said.
It took 21 days to cross the Atlantic. It was a journey he would make seven times.
“We’d escort them just about to where they got to Great Britain and then we took off and went to Ireland and docked. That was our home base at Londonderry, [Northern] Ireland.”
The HMS Ferret shore base in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, was responsible for 149 escort and anti-submarine patrol vessels, 2,000 shore-based personnel, and 20,000 British and Canadian seamen. This included the St. Stephen, which Lakness said had a crew of 149 men.
“A couple of times we were threatened. We figured there were U-boats and of course the captain got all excited and we dropped some depth charges. An oil slick came up, and ‘Oh!’ he said, ‘We’ve got them!’ But I don’t think we did yet. They probably just squirted up some oil to make us think that we got them,” he said.
“When we dropped the depth charges, I can remember it was just off of Ireland. The fish come up, so we lowered the boat and went out and got some fish.”
Lakness remembers May 8, 1945, well. Victory in Europe Day arrived three days after his 22nd birthday.
“We brought out the rum and celebrated. But he [the captain] said, ‘Well, you’re not through. You’re going West.’ We were still engaged with Japan, so we were heading to go to the West, to the Pacific,” he said.
“They gave me a chance of having a discharge or going to the Japanese War, so I volunteered to go.”
The St. Stephen went through modifications to prepare for engagements in the Pacific, and Lakness took a train to Vancouver. But Japan’s surrender on Sept. 2, 1945, meant the war was over by the time he reached the West Coast.
Lakness received his discharge in Saskatoon and finished his agriculture degree. He took over the family farm and continued there until the early 1960s, when he spent three years as an appraiser for Farm Credit Canada. After this stint, he returned to Govan to farm for another 17 years. The family farm remained in the hands of his son Reg until he sold it two years ago with his father’s blessing. They both live in Regina and remain active curlers.
Larkness, who was decorated four times, believes the sacrifices Canadians made in war deserve to be remembered, even though his generation’s sacrifices precede the lifetimes of most of today’s citizens.
“Well, don’t you think they should? They wanted to give up their lives for their country. Those in the army I think were the worst off because they got into trenches and stuff like that. It was a pretty tough life, and they should be remembered. They took the brunt of everything, the army,” he said.
“It’s so darned long ago now it has been forgotten, I think. World War II veterans, they’re getting pretty scarce.”
