Perth Road WW2 Vet To Celebrate 100th Birthday At Legion 560 In Kingston

Jeff Green | Dec 07, 2022

For a man who is on the verge of his 100th birthday, Ken Green is doing pretty well. He lives on his own in an apartment in Kingston, gets a bit of help with housekeeping and some meals from the Department of Veterans affairs, but still cooks quite a bit for himself. He enjoys reading and visiting friends and family.

Once a week he visits his wife, who is in a long term care facility, and is close with his step-daughters Krista and Anita, and his son Gerry as well.

All in all, he has aged pretty well.

“I was talking to him yesterday,” said his step-daughter Krista early this week, “he was pickling beets.”

“I learned to cook from my mother,” Ken said, in an interview late last week, “she was a pretty good cook, and she taught me her recipes. I still like to make lemon pie, and coconut cream pie also.”

His mother's life was not easy, nor was life for his father and his 9 siblings during the 1920's and 1930's. They lived on a farm on Devil Lake, north-east from Perth Road in the Bedford Mills area.

“It was kind of hard times, you know. We were farming in the 20'3 and 30's, when I was young. I remember going out to feed the cows in the winter one time, with no shoes on. I would stand where the cows had been laying down to warm my feet,” he remembers.

“We kept hens, and cattle for milk and butter, and there was always enough food, but not much else. My father was a pretty fair carpenter so that helped,” he said.

As soon as they were old enough, his brothers went off to work, and he was doing the same, working in construction in Kingston when he was conscripted into the army at the age of 20. He took basic training in Peterborough, and further training in British Columbia, on what were then called the Queen Charlotte Islands (they were renamed Haida Gwai in 2010). A member if the Glengarry Stormont Dundas Highlanders, he spent Christmas on a ship to England in 1944. After a short stay in England, he was sent to Holland and Germany as allied forces were turning the tide in the war.

He remembers crossing the Ems river in North-east Germany, “in broad daylight. They were really shelling us. We were in two boats, and we lost quite a few.”

They made it over to the small City of Emden, and kept on fighting once they were there, and there were injuries and death among his comrades.

“One guy was standing with his leg sticking out of a building. He said they can't get me here, but they did. Me and another guy had to go out and drag him back in. I was with one guy another time, we re going to get something. He stepping through of a door and they killed him stone dead. It was street to street fighting, you never knew what was in front of you. In one town we captured prisoners and one of the soldiers was a 12 year old boy,” he said.

After the war ended in May of 1945, he was stationed in Germany and Holland, and then returned to England. The regiment returned to Canada at the end of 1945.

“It was strange coming home” he said, “we landed in Cornwall and I took a train to Kingston late at night. When I got there I did not see anyone so I started walking in to Kingston to find a room for the night, but then I saw there was someone there to pick me up and take me home.”

He had a 30 day leave and went back into the army, where he would have remained but there was work to do at home. After “6 or 7 years on the farm” he took a job in Kingston but eventually got his own farm nearby by for a while. Eventually he sold his farm and worked at Burton's Pest Control and eventually as a cleaner at the Kingston Psychiatric hospital, until he retired in 1987.

Although he eventually moved to Kingston with his family, he has always kept in touch with his extended family in Perth Road, and also had small cottage on Desert Lake for a number of years. The farm where he grew up is still in the family, and is farmed by his niece.

“I still get out there now and then,” he said.

He kept up a few friendships with soldiers that he fought with, particularly with another man from Perth Road, Jack Green (no relation) who settled in the Peterborough area. Ken was a member of the Sydenham Legion, and he has also done a lot of reading about the history of the Stormont Dundas Glengarry Highlanders.

His family is extending an invitation to friends, neighbours, and relatives to a birthday celebration this Sunday, December 11, and Legion Branch 560 at 734 Montreal Street in Kingston between 1pm and 4pm.