Ernest Ferguson may now live in landlocked Clinton but he still remembers his time in the Royal Canadian Navy and his travels which brought him to the Pacific.
Ferguson was born in Haney, B.C. (which is the centre of Maple Ridge) on Aug. 25, 1948, to two parents who had been seasonal workers. This led to Ferguson to living in a different house each year, but he stayed mainly in the Maple Ridge area.
"Wherever my parents could afford a rental place," Ferguson recalled. "My dad was a seasonal worker, and my mom worked in Berryland Cannery, which was another seasonal job."
He enlisted in the Canadian military in January 1967, citing the fact that he did not do well in school as his motivation.
"I dropped out and had nothing else to do. And my buddy Tom thought it was a really good idea."
He served in the Royal Canadian Navy from 1967 until 1971. His family was not unfamiliar with military life: Ferguson's uncle perished in World War II in Flanders Fields.
Unlike his uncle, Ferguson never took part in any military engagements. Canada, despite being an ally of the United States during the Cold War, did not officially participate in the Vietnam War, yet Ferguson remembers the Americans who fought there.
"That was going on pretty heavy when we did our Australia/New Zealand tour, and I ran into a lot of American sailors on leave in Australia and New Zealand. They would get two weeks off and a break in action. And instead of going all the way home, they were shipped down to Australia."
During his first year in the Navy he served on Canada's east coast, mainly in Cornwallis and Halifax in Nova Scotia. He would later be stationed in Victoria at CFB Esquimalt, serving on the HMC St. Croix, a Town-class destroyer which had been in active service between 1958 and 1974. One of Ferguson's fondest memories is of travelling, especially to Fiji in the Pacific Ocean.
"It was very interesting for a young guy who never went on holidays."
During his time in the Navy, Ferguson was trained in what he described as intense shipboard firefighting. Fires are especially dangerous on a ship and if left unchecked can result in the sinking of the vessel. This experience would later prove useful after he joined the Boston Bar/North Bend Volunteer Fire Department and became its fire chief following his time in the Navy.
"I used some basic on-shipboard firefighting skills and learned to work in the real world," Ferguson recalled.
The Cold War was a factor in one expedition that the Navy took: following Russian fishing boats.
"We spent a good deal of time following those big fishing boats with a submarine underneath them," Ferguson said. These boats would often go from Alaska to California, then back up the coast. When the boats were in Canadian waters, Ferguson added, the Navy would tail them, and when the boats were in American waters the duty was handed over to the U.S. Navy.
Ferguson was discharged in 1971 on compassionate leave after his father died from heart failure. He said it was awkward to readjust to civilian life after the military.
"I wasn't actually homeless. I did with some couch shared with friends, then I settled in Boston Bar and got involved with everything in town for 43 years," Ferguson said.
Ferguson's wife passed away in 2009. After retiring, he met another lady, and they travelled all over the country before settling down in Clinton.
Although Ferguson had been a member of the Royal Canadian Legion since the 1970s, there was no Legion in Boston Bar. After moving to Clinton, he joined Royal Canadian Legion Branch 194 in 2018 and is now the branch's vice-president. Some of his duties include taking care of the building.
Commemorating Remembrance Day has always been a big deal, largely due to his family's history with the military, he said.
