Hi and welcome to my 'Mess'. 

If you do not have a naval background you may be wondering about the name I have chosen for my piece of cyber space. The term ‘mess’, short for mess-deck, is used in the Canadian navy to describe the part of a ship where sailors sleep and in many cases relax after work. In World War 2 and for some time after, many sailors also ate in the same area where they slept. Food having been prepared by the cooks in a central galley, rations were drawn by a ‘duty mess man’ in community pots, and transported to the ‘mess’ were it was portioned out to the sailors living in that mess. If a sailor was not working or on watch, there was no other place in the ship to relax, read, writes letters or talk to his messmates. In larger ships ‘messes’ could be home to more than 30 sailors and a ship generally had many ‘messes’. Hence the ‘mess’ was and still is a pretty important place to the sailor at sea and while away from home.

As you can see the ‘mess’ in a ship is a focal place and ‘home away from home’ to many of yesterday’s and to a lesser extent to today’s sailors. I therefore decided to carry on that tradition of a 'home away from home' with my web site.

I was born and raised in the City of Montreal, in the Province of Quebec, Canada and am a member of the first wave of baby-boomers. My family is a naval family, with my father having served in the RCN, one uncle in the RCNVR and another in the Merchant Navy. I now make my home in the city of Victoria, in the Province of British Columbia on the West Coast of Canada.

In 1963 I joined the Royal Canadian Navy as an Ordinary Seaman and left my hometown for the first time since my second birthday, when I went to HMCS Cornwallis, in Nova Scotia for basic training.

A naval career of 33 years followed with service in many of HMC ships including, Stadacona, Kootenay, Granby, Fraser, Naden, Protecteur, MacKenzie, Qu’Appelle, and Saskatchewan. In 1985 to mark the 75^th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Navy, Chuck Bainbridge and I published a book called "Honours and Awards – Canadian Naval Forces – World War 2". There were good times and there were bad times but mostly they were good, and the people, they were the best.

In 1964 I met my wife Betty and in 1965 we were married. Along the way we had two children both boys; Ed who is married to Debra and Jim who is married to Wendy. They have given us three marvelous granddaughters Sara, Jessica and Melissa.

In 1996 we decided it was time for a change, so with mixed feelings we retired from the Navy. We now try and do a little camping, Betty does some volunteer work and I do a little woodworking as well as a little volunteer work. I am very interested in Canadian naval history and collect naval memorabilia, which I have been doing for 30 years.

Well enough of the background. I trust you have found this site useful and the information  contained on these pages well presented and easy to understand. Should you have any comments or suggestions, positive or negative, please email me or note them in my guest book and I will respond.

Thank you for visiting my Mess and please take a moment to sign my logbook,

Yours aye,

Ed