John Robert William Craig

John Craig's father Robert Vernon Craig was born in 1896 in Kingston, Ontario. He enlisted in the First World War and saw action in the artillery in France. He married Edith Gadsby on August 25, 1918 in her hometown of Burton-on-Trent, England. After bringing his war bride to Toronto, they had John on September 3, 1919. A brother, Frank, followed in 1924, the year that John started school at Norway. Robert's father lived with the family. He was an invalid after being struck by a streetcar. Robert was a warehouse worker at a storage facility and the family hopped around the neighbourhood, living on Burgess and Duvernet before settling at 125 Duvernet Avenue in 1933.

John was very musical and played guitar well. He graduated from Norway in June 1933 and continued at Malvern where he played some rugby and baseball. Upon graduating in 1938, he became a music teacher at a conservatory on Pape Avenue on the northeast corner at Danforth. He specialized in Hawaiian and Spanish guitar.

In April 1940 John tried to enlist in the RCAF and had some impressive references, including the local member of parliament and Denton Massey, the grandson of Hart Massey who founded the Massey agricultural machinery empire, but John was rejected as he had some medical issues and was sixteen pounds underweight. He returned a year later and was healthy enough to enlist. His first choice was to be a pilot. He stated that after the war he would return to his teaching job but taking up cattle farming interested him. His ambition was to be an aeronautical engineer. He felt that his musical ability would be an asset to the force and stated that “I can provide entertainment.”

He did his basic training in Toronto and six weeks later was posted to the newly opened training school in Aylmer. On August 8 he arrived in Belleville to work on flight theory, navigation and other classroom-taught courses where his marks were excellent. On September 24 he began flight school at Malton airport (now Pearson). The students usually were given 50 hours of basic flying instruction. John completed the course on November 21, but he was not considered pilot material. He was too timid but it was thought that he would “make a top notch air observer.” He spent some time at the base in Trenton and on January 21, 1942 he started his air observer's course at Malton. He came in fourth in his class and was deemed “excellent officer material.” In April he went to Bombing and Gunnery School in Jarvis, Ontario where he placed third in his class and was “very popular with his classmates.”

Toronto Telegram, August 1942.

On May 23 he was sent to Rivers, Manitoba to attend the Central Navigation School. In Toronto at St. John's Norway church on June 26, he married Audrey Irene Johnston, who lived on Rhodes Avenue. After a very brief honeymoon, John took a train to Halifax and was soon assigned to the Operational Training Unit at Debert, Nova Scotia. He was assigned to the RAF Ferry Command which ferried aircraft from North American manufacturers to Great Britain and later, the Middle East. If the aircraft weren't built in Canada, in the Toronto area, they came mostly from California. Civilian pilots would ferry the aircraft across the Atlantic either flying via Newfoundland and Iceland or via a southern route from the Caribbean, down South America to Brazil, across the ocean, refuelling at Ascension Island which is a small island in the middle of the ocean between South America and Africa and then continuing onward to Africa. John was navigator on many ferry crossings.

Douglas Boston Bomber Mark III from www.tracesofwar.com.

On December 15, John had four days' leave. He either had a quick visit to Toronto to see his wife and family or Audrey came to see him in Nova Scotia. Soon after Christmas, John was sent to the Caribbean to be part of a crew ferrying a Boston bomber to Britain. (John's family was told that the plane's destination was Britain, but the southern ferry route was used to send supplies to the Allied forces in North Africa.) It was a medium sized warplane, produced by the Douglas Aircraft Company in California. The captain, John Robert Scribbens and the radio operator, Sidney George Wells were civilians from Illinois and Bedford, England, respectively. The Mark III Boston BZ 238 was in Georgetown, British Guiana either starting its trip or refuelling on the morning of December 30, 1942. The flight took off at approximately 1110 hrs, en route to Belem, Brazil. (There is some discrepancy in the reports. It may have been flying over the ocean from Georgetown.) The plane wasn't seen again. The navy sent ships out from British Guiana and Trinidad to search for the plane, to no avail.

John's name is on the Ottawa Memorial, commemorating air personnel who died in North America with no known grave.

By 1948 Audrey remarried a Mr. Caruso. Robert died September 27, 1957. John's mother was still living in the house on Duvernet until the mid-1960s.