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Harry Sanders: Veteran. Reader. Friend. Bon vivant. Born July 10, 1923 in South Shields, U.K.; died Dec. 14, 2018 in Tillsonburg, Ont., of a heart attack; aged 93.
Harry Sanders came into my life in 2004, when he and his wife Carolyn moved to Tillsonburg, Ont. He visited the public library often, where I worked. Always tastefully dressed, sporting a long, white pony tail, a diamond stud earring and a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, Harry was not my typical library patron. But he hadn’t led a typical life either.
There is a lot of space and time separating Tillsonburg, Ont., from South Shields, U.K., where Harry was born in 1923. Following his graduation from the Maritime School of Wireless, Harry sought adventure as a wartime ship radio officer. In 1942, his career and life almost came to an end when his ship was torpedoed and sunk off the west coast of Africa.
When he told the story, Harry recalled with deep hatred how he watched the German captain raise his submarine into the middle of the debris, survey the damage – with Harry desperately hanging onto the ruins of the ship – then slink away under the sea. Floating for days on a raft, Harry managed to reach the shores of Sierra Leone, and eventually recover from his trauma. He returned in time to serve on a ship ferrying soldiers across the English Channel on D-Day.
In 1957, he left England to join his mother and sister in Winnipeg. He eventually became an executive with B.F. Goodrich Rubber in Kitchener, Ont., and then worked at Hudson Bay Company establishing men’s fashion departments across the country.
At 71, Harry returned to the sea, where his life changed once again. On a cruise ship from Spain to North America, Harry asked a lovely lady to dance. Carolyn became his dance partner for the rest of his life.
Harry Sanders as a member of the Merchant Marine.Handout
Harry and I enjoyed sharing books from our personal libraries (which had no due dates). His reading tastes were always eclectic and wide-ranging, bouncing between fiction and nonfiction. When he realized that he had neither the physical space nor the money to acquire the complete works of Joseph Conrad, he turned to me for help. He was delighted to discover that – within minutes – he could download Conrad’s work onto his computer for just $6.
While Harry’s wartime services were behind him, they weren’t forgotten. To his astonishment, he learned that France had awarded him a Legion of Honour in recognition of his services during D-Day. In December 2017, the Consul General of France travelled to Tillsonburg to present him with the medal before a large audience at the local community centre.
When a teacher at Toronto’s Crestwood private school learned of this presentation, he led his class into learning more about Harry’s story, eventually developing a website of his life and adventure.
In his final years, he would often speak locally to groups about his war years, always stressing that his wartime contribution was only one of many.
In December, Harry’s heart issues caught up to him and he was admitted to hospital. I visited often, bringing novels from C.S. Forester’s Captain Hornblower series. As I read Hornblower’s exploits, Harry would lie back in his hospital bed, smiling, imagining himself back on the sea.
Matthew Scholtz is Harry’s friend.
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Lives Lived celebrates the everyday, extraordinary, unheralded lives of Canadians who have recently passed. To learn how to share the story of a family member or friend, go online to tgam.ca/livesguide