Download The Keith Beedie Story - Beedie Group

44
THE KEITH
BEEDIE STORY
The train moved so
slowly and stopped
so frequently that
Keithʼs friend
commented that
the cowcatcher on
the front should be
moved to the back
so “the cows wouldnʼt
run into us.”
PART 1: LAYING THE FOUNDATION
CHAPTER 3: HOME AND AWAY
Th e thing that most upset Keith about not doing fl ying school was
missing the chance to get airborne. Even though he had spent three
years in the Air Cadets while in Vancouver, and a year and a half at
Boeing, he had only been up in a plane once. Determined to get up
in the sky, he and a friend went out to the airport on Toronto’s Centre
Island on a free day. Th e airport was busy and the two young men
asked two RCAF pilots if they could hitch a ride to anywhere, just for
the opportunity to fl y. As luck would have it, an old Avro was making
a run up to Goderich to drop off some parachutes at the air station.
Th e two young men were given the thumbs-up to tag along. Keith was
thrilled. Th e excitement of fl ying made him temporarily forget the
letdown of still being stuck in Canada.
Th e plane touched down in Goderich and Keith and his friend were
told to hop out. “Th e pilot didn’t even turn off the props. Th e guys
told us that since they’d given us a ride, we could run the parachutes
inside for them and save them the trouble of stopping. I guess they had
somewhere to go,” says Keith. When they leaned down to pick up the
parachutes Keith’s friend happened to grab hold of the ripcord. One tug
and the entire parachute deployed in a heartbeat. With the plane’s twin
engines still going full tilt, there was a strong wind on the runway. Keith
looked up in shock, just in time to see his buddy shooting
across the airfi eld, still holding on tightly. “He was about
50 feet away by the time he let go,” laughs Keith. “I’ll
never forget that sight as long as I live.”
Th e fl ight to Goderich was one-way only, so the two had
to fi nd their own way back to Toronto. It wasn’t a simple
prospect. Th ey managed to hitchhike partway to a town
called Clinton, which had an RCAF base. “However, the
place was barely an airport,” recalls Keith. “It was just a
big concrete building. Th e only reason it existed was to
teach radar to American offi cers.” Keith and his friend
looked around and commented to each other how
horrible it would be to be posted in Clinton. It wasn’t
an easy place to pick up a ride either, and as they had a
limited amount of time before they had to report back
to Manning Depot, they boarded a “milk-run” train
back to Toronto. Th e train moved so slowly and stopped
so frequently that Keith’s friend commented that the
cowcatcher on the front should be moved to the back
so “the cows wouldn’t run into us.” Keith lost himself in
laughter for the second time that day.
DISAPPOINTMENT AND GROWING UP FAST
The hilarity of the day trip was forgotten in short order. When Keith returned to Manning
Depot, he was informed that at the conclusion of his six weeks he would be posted to
Clinton. “I had no idea what I would do,” says Keith. “I knew I’d just be sitting around
looking at the American offi cers.” The backwater air station was a far cry from Keith’s
original intent in joining the Air Force. In fact, he never did get trained to fl y. “It was a
disappointment for me. A very big disappointment,” Keith says. Later, Keith heard rumours
that the fellow he had met at the recruitment offi ce, who was in Flight 108, had made it
overseas and had been shot down. He was never able to verify that story, but occasionally
Keith wondered how things would have turned out if he had picked up the other ticket on the
Recruitment Offi ce desk and had been on that fi rst train out of Vancouver in June 1944.
At the end of his service, Keith returned to Vancouver. While he
was posted in Clinton, his mother had suddenly left his father in
Toronto and returned to Vancouver. His parents would never live
together again. Th ey divorced sometime later and both would remarry
twice. Keith still isn’t sure what went wrong in his parents’ marriage.
“Th ey didn’t ever talk much about that stuff ,” says Keith. Having
Keith’s RCAF discharge papers.
He signed up in March
1944 and was discharged in
December of the same year.
45