(F.G.D. Baker is not listed on Norway's Roll of Honour, but is on Malvern C.I.'s.)

 

Giff Baker was born in Toronto on September 7, 1917. His father Gifford Charles, known as Charles (b. 1879), was an Englishman from the village of Thornage, Norfolk, England. His father died when he was 6 and he came to Canada in 1890, presumably with his mother and any siblings. Giff's mother Bertha Maud Westgate (“Maud”) was a farm girl from Pickering, born in 1882. The couple married in 1907 in Toronto. Charles worked at various jobs and was mainly a salesman. Maud gave birth to premature twin sons in 1909, Gifford Charles Jr and Perry George. Gifford Jr died a week later and Perry did not survive infancy. In 1910 Charles was a grocer at 1370 Queen Street East on the northwest corner at Greenwood Avenue and in 1914 their daughter Dorothy Pearl was born. They were living at 122 Brooklyn Avenue when Giff arrived and his father was working as a travelling salesman.

 

The family frequently drove to Pickering to visit Maud's sister and on one Saturday afternoon in June 1920, their car crashed when the brakes failed going down Stott's Hill in Highland Creek. Maud was thrown out the side of the vehicle and Giff was thrown out the other side and rolled down an embankment. Charles and Dorothy escaped injury and miraculously, Giff's and his mother's injuries were minor.

 

By the time Giff entered Norway in 1923, the family was living at 3 Rhyl Avenue. His father was a salesman for Fleischmann's Yeast Company. A brother, William Maurice Pierson Baker arrived on November 1, 1924 and two years later, an adopted sister Audrey Elizabeth, who was born on June 18, 1926, completed the family. The Bakers moved to 30 Firstbrook Road for a year and in 1927 they settled at 17 Cassels Avenue. (Firstbrook became Firstbrooke in the early 1960s.)

 

Giff graduated from Norway in 1930 and entered Malvern Collegiate. He was a bright boy with excellent marks, especially in English Literature, French and German. With the Depression many families had to re-evaluate how they would get by financially. By 1930, Giff's father was no longer with Fleischmann's and had moved to Pickering where he worked in a store. Ultimately the family moved to Brougham, on Highway 7, close to Bertha's family who were still in Pickering. The younger siblings started at Brougham's school in April 1933. Giff remained at Malvern until his graduation in 1935 and he either took a train into Toronto or (more likely) he boarded with a family in the Beach neighbourhood. He played on the school's rugby team and was a cadet for four years.

 

In the mid-1930s, Brougham was a busy farming community at Highway 7 and Brock Road in what is now northern Pickering. It had four churches, a schoolhouse, a hotel, a general store and other amenities to serve a farming community. In the 1970s much of the land was expropriated for the Pickering Airport and most recently for the 407 highway, leaving the village a virtual ghost town with about 150 residents. After Giff graduated from Malvern, he became a farm labourer on the Bayles farm near Brougham. Giff's father ran Brougham's general store from 1934 to 1937. (The building is now in the Pickering Museum Village.) Giff was the treasurer of Brougham's Young People's Society and his sister Dorothy was the president. The society would have organized activities and events for the young adults of Brougham. During this time Giff took a correspondence course in diesel, gas and aircraft engines.

 

In 1938, Giff went back to Toronto for a year to study Mechanics and Machine Shop at Central Tech. His family moved to Pickering Village. When Giff finished his course, he returned to the Bayles farm where his job was now to maintain machinery and the tractor. He must have known that war was coming in June 1939 as he tried to enlist in the RCAF as an air engine mechanic. He was unsuccessful.

 

Giff finally enlisted in the RCAF on September 17, 1940. He listed his hobbies as woodworking, shooting, baseball, rugby and hockey. By now, he wasn't interested in being ground crew, but wanted to be a pilot. The air force tests indicated that he had the aptitude of a pilot and he began a year of training, jumping around Canadian air bases. He did his basic training in Toronto, then transferred to Picton; North Sydney, Nova Scotia; Victoriaville, Quebec; Stanley, Nova Scotia and finally Moncton, where he received his pilot's wings on September 13, 1941. His instructors felt he was “extremely intelligent and conscientious, reliable but very reserved in manner.” He was given two weeks' embarkation leave immediately after and no doubt returned to his family in Pickering.

 

When he returned from leave, it was not to embark for Britain. He reported to Charlottetown for a navigation and reconnaissance course which lasted until November 29. When that ended, he was sent to the other side of Canada to Patricia Bay, near Victoria, British Columbia, to learn how to fly Beaufort planes. The Beaufort was a torpedo bomber, that, at the end of 1941, had already proved to be a formidable foe of the German Navy, most notably in the sinking of the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the port of Brest.

 

A successful torpedo drop required that the approach run to the target needed to be straight and at a speed and height where the torpedo would enter the water smoothly: too high or too low and the torpedo could "porpoise" (skip through the water), dive or even break up. Height over the water had to be judged without the benefit of a radio altimeter and misjudgment was easy, especially in calm conditions, the Beauforts using the 18-inch (450-mm) Mk XII aerial torpedo, the average drop-height was 68ft (21m) and the average range of release was 670yd (610m). During the run-in, the aircraft was vulnerable to defensive anti-aircraft fire and it took courage to fly through it with no chance of evasive manoeuvres.  (From Barker, Ralph. The Ship-Busters: The Story of the R.A.F. Torpedo-Bombers. London: Chatto & Windus Ltd., 1957, p. 75 and Robertson, Bruce. Beaufort Special. Shepperton, Surrey, UK: Ian Allan Ltd., 1976, p. 14, via Wikipedia.)