Documenting the WWII Fallen of Toronto's Elementary Schools
David Harvey "Jack" Houghton
Jack's father, William Archibald Houghton was born in Sittingbourne, England in 1894. It is located 25 kilometres northwest of Canterbury on the east coast. He left school early to work in a paper mill and at 15, he sailed for Canada alone, arriving in May 1910. His intention was to work in a paper mill in Toronto. In 1915 he married Eva Penn, a woman ten years his senior. Eva had been born in Winnipeg but her family moved to Toronto when she was a child. She gave birth to Wilfred in 1916 and Eva in 1917. William was working as a die maker and they were living in a house on Skipper Avenue near Donlands and Danforth which is now called Milverton Boulevard.
David was born on December 17, 1920 and the family soon began calling him Jack. As the family grew, they moved to Caroline Avenue near Queen and Pape. A son named Edgar died in infancy early in 1923. Two more daughters were born, Violet in 1926 and Muriel in 1927. William had been working as a printer. 1928 proved to be a decisive year for the Houghtons – William began manufacturing folding paper boxes in his own business at 1201 Queen Street East near Leslie Street and he moved the family to 8 Doncaster Avenue. Jack probably attended Leslie Garden School, now known as Bruce Public School, for his first few grades. Until the 1970s, it was common for children whose birthdays were later in the year, usually from September onward, to delay their school start to the next year. So when Jack arrived at Danforth Park, it was probably for Grade 2 and he would have graduated in the Class of 1935. Jack attended high school at East York which he left at the end of Grade 10. His brother and older sister were already working at their father's business, which had relocated to the northwest corner of Carlaw Avenue and Eastern Avenue. Jack started in the company as a delivery truck driver and when he was 19, he had been promoted to salesman. By 1939, the family had moved to 1 Highbourne Road in Forest Hill, to a house which looked out on the grounds of Upper Canada College.
Not much is known about Jack's hobbies. He met and started dating Frances (“Fran”) Fraser who lived in Leaside.
Jack and Fran Fraser, ca. 1940. From The Canadian Virtual War Memorial.
Jack enlisted in the navy on July 24, 1941, immediately becoming an Ordinary Seaman, like all new recruits. He remained in Toronto for his initial training and passed the first level by November 5. On January 7, 1942, he was sent to St. Hyacinthe, Quebec, 25 kilometres east of Montreal to study at the naval signal school there.
HMCS St Hyacinthe. From www.canada.ca.
Few sailors taking the primary courses at HMCS St Hyacinthe had actual sea experience. Accordingly, great efforts were made to simulate sea conditions as far as possible in their work. Model ships' bridges were built on the roofs of half a dozen buildings at the signal school and the signalmen manned these regularly to carry out ship-to-ship exercises with flags, projectors and semaphore. A “rolling bridge” unofficially known as the “rocking horse” had been constructed which simulated both the pitching and the rolling of a ship. This was used to train signalmen in semaphore and its object was not to test the ability of the sailor to withstand seasickness, but to teach him how to maintain his balance and send a legible message from an unsteady platform. In addition, they were trained in reading dim flashing exercises after dark. Signalmen were also required to have a working knowledge of all signal publications, to know how to use and care for signal apparatus and to be familiar with the use and care of binoculars and telescopes. (From https://www.canada.ca/en/navy/services/history/ships-histories/st-hyacinthe.html)
On April 24, Jack qualified as a signalman and was granted leave for two weeks. He returned home and asked Fran to marry him. It was arranged that the wedding would take place during his next leave in October. He reported at Halifax on May 13 to be assigned to a ship. Three days later he went aboard the HMCS Ottawa as a new crew member with a salary of $1.60 per day.
The Ottawa was a destroyer which had been purchased from the British Navy in 1938. Like all destroyers, she was fast moving and built to defend and protect. When Jack joined her, she had just been assigned to the navy's Newfoundland Escort Force which protected convoys travelling between North America and Britain. Supplies of food and resources like oil and minerals were needed in Britain as the German navy was determined to starve the British Isles and the war industries. Troop ships carrying Canadian army and air force men to Britain also needed protection from the packs of U-boat submarines prowling beneath the ocean's surface.
HMCS Ottawa. From www.navy.gc.ca.
There were many Toronto men on the ship and Able Seaman Fred Coomer attended East York High School when Jack was there. Ordinary Seaman David Bell's pregnant wife was living with her parents at 80 Doncaster Avenue. No doubt Jack made a few friends out of them and the other Toronto crew.
HMCS Ottawa – ship's company, St. John's, Newfoundland, June 1942. Jack should be one of the men in the photo. From The Naval Museum of Manitoba.
The Ottawa was based in St John's, Newfoundland and on May 31, she left port for her first trip to Northern Ireland. Previously, the ship had been providing protection between Newfoundland and Iceland. This was a slow convoy, rendezvousing with 62 merchant ships carrying grain and lumber which had left Sydney, Nova Scotia. There were 17 military escort ships, including the Ottawa. The merchant ships moved at 8 knots or less and were more vulnerable to attack. After a rather uneventful sailing, they arrived at port in Northern Ireland on June 12. The Ottawa left the convoy and Royal Navy ships would continue the escort to Liverpool. The crew's return trip was from June 20 to 28, escorting mainly empty ships back to North America. The crew had a few weeks in port before the next escort and the ship set out on July 9 on a fast convoy, which would take six days instead of the nine that the slow convoys took. There were several U-boat warnings as it was believed that the convoy was being shadowed by enemy submarines. The ship arrived safely in Northern Ireland on July 16. There was a letter from home waiting for Jack in Ireland. He was disappointed that he hadn't yet heard from Toronto other than that one letter. Jack wrote to his family that he and some members of the crew were ordered to a rest camp after some heavy engagement in the high seas. From available resources, there is no documented indication of any engagement during any of the convoys that the Ottawa escorted between June and August. Jack wrote a letter to his family, part of which was published in The Toronto Star on September 21: “It's been pretty exciting out here and, believe me, the Germans are not having the best of it.”
Another return convoy for the ship took place from July 26 to August 5. It was also uneventful, other than one of the navy ships getting rammed by a merchant ship in the fog off of St. John's. When Jack got into port, his concerns about the lack of correspondence were calmed because 35 letters from Fran, his family and friends were waiting for him.
The Ottawa left port on August 15, escorting another slow convoy of 29 merchant ships containing grain, fuel oil and lumber, arriving in Northern Ireland on August 26. Jack mailed a letter to his family on September 1.
On September 5, the Ottawa left Northern Ireland to help to escort 35 freighters back to North America as part of convoy ON 127. With the Ottawa, the Canadian navy provided five more ships for the convoy, the destroyer St. Croix and four corvettes, which were the smallest navy warships. The Admiral of the German U-boats had decided several months before to shift their patrols away from shipping lanes near Britain and from the range of aircraft patrols to the mid-Atlantic. A line of 13 U-boats were patrolling 800 kilometres west of Ireland and on September 9, one of them detected the convoy, but soon lost contact. The next day, one of the U-boats found the convoy again and successfully torpedoed one of the freighters. The Ottawa was one of the navy ships which searched for the submarine, to no avail. She continued to patrol astern of the convoy and all of the escort ships remained on high alert. That night, another freighter was torpedoed. The two destroyers fell back to rescue the crew of the first ship, which sank. When they returned, another two freighters had been struck, but not severely damaged. Depth charges were dropped and two of the U-boats returned to port, having sustained damage.
Remarkably, none of the Canadian ships' radar sets was functioning on September 11. Another freighter was lost in a daylight attack. An RAF Liberator patrol bomber flew over the convoy and prevented any further attacks that day. Nightfall gave protection to the U-boats and they sank two more freighters and damaged a third. The Ottawa narrowly missed being hit by four torpedoes.
On September 12, the visibility was excellent for spotting the enemy submarines yet the U-boats sank another freighter which was straggling behind the convoy. On September 13, the convoy came within range of Canadian bomber planes and during the day several patrols were sent out. At dusk, two destroyers joined the convoy from Newfoundland. Just after 11 pm, 930 kilometres east of Newfoundland, submarine U-91 torpedoed the Ottawa, blowing the bow off of the ship which contained the signalmen's mess and stokers' quarters. Ten minutes later another torpedo struck the ship, tearing it in half. The ship sank ten minutes after that, the two sections standing on end and then going straight down. 69 men were pulled from the water, fortunately alive due to the warmth of the Gulf Stream water. 114 crewmen of the Ottawa lost their lives, including Jack, whose body was never recovered. It seems highly probable that he was killed in the blast of the first torpedo.
The Ottawa was the last attack on the convoy and the remaining ships safely reached their destinations.
Jack's name is on the Halifax Memorial to the members of the Canadian Navy, Army and Merchant Navy with no known graves. Jack's parents moved to Woodland Park Road in the Birch Cliff neighbourhood in the late 1940s. William had merged his company with another one and it had relocated from Eastern Avenue to Birchmount Road. He passed away in 1951 and his wife Eva died in 1957. Jack's sister Violet named a son David and Jack's brother Wilfred named a son Jack.