Once Upon the Brine

Life at Sea and Ashore in the
Canadian Navy during the Cold War
(1946-1989)

This webpage contains links to interesting and sometimes funny stories that cover the period of Canadian Naval history mentioned in the title.
 

Introduction

Skip introduction and go straight to stories.

William (Biff) Hawke here. I’m a retired Canadian Navy man. This mini-website contains an accumulation of short stories that serving and/or retired sailors and I collected during our naval careers. My involvement in the exercise is to write and/or compile stories and post them here for the world to see.

This site is simply meant to inform and entertain the reader. Rest assured it is not an exposé; and no axes are ground herein. Also, you’re not about to read anything that will embarrass anyone, because if it was thought that a character would be exposed or embarrassed, her/his name was changed.

Those of us who served in the Canadian Navy during the Cold War witnessed many changes during our careers. Several of these changes are noted in the following paragraphs:

• The Korean War was fought between 1950 and 1953. Some Canadian ships served off the coast of the Korean Peninsula during the conflict. When it ended, the first significant change was the phasing out of the old World War II ships. During my time in the Navy (1963-1988), I saw a lot of them go. For instance: the frigates Beacon Hill, Cap de la Madeleine, La Hulloise, New Glasgow, New Waterford (I sailed on her), Outremont, Stettler, Swansea (sailed on her too), Antigonish, Fort Erie, Buckingham, Inch Arran, Lanark, Lauzon and Victoriaville; the old tribal class destroyers Athabaskan, Haida, Huron, Iroquois, Nootka, Micmac and Cayuga; the aircraft carrier Bonaventure; the submarines Grilse and Rainbow; and the fleet maintenance ships Cape Scott and Cape Breton all were phased out. HMCS Haida rests in Ontario Place in Toronto as a museum. I don’t think any others survived the scrap yard. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.
   

• Most of the new River Class destroyer escorts (DDEs) were commissioned in the second half of the 1950s, although two – Annapolis and Nipigon came during the sixties. The latter two were built with a flight deck for helicopters and were thus called DDHs. Some of the DDEs were later converted into DDHs. Others were converted to IRE (Improved Restigouche Class).
   

• Canada acquired three new submarines – Ojibwa, Onondaga and Okanogan – during the mid-to-late 1960s. These were built at Chatham Dockyard in the UK. I was fortunate enough to attend the commissioning of the Ojibwa and the launching of Onondaga in September 1965 while serving on HMCS Kootenay.
   

• A major change that we witnessed was unification of the Royal Canadian Navy, the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Canadian Army on 01 February 1968. After that, we were simply the Canadian Forces (CF). The change didn’t affect the ships too much – we still kept our HMCS designation rather than revert to something as ridiculous as CNS (Canadian Navy Ship) – but within a year we were all wearing green uniforms, a sour point for some.
   

• Matchmaker - Naval Training Squadron was formed by NATO in the early 1960s and transformed into the Standing Naval Force Atlantic (STANAVFORLANT or SNFL) in January 1968. It was thought at the time of creation that this force of destroyer-type ships, continuously operational, would enhance existing cooperation between the naval forces of NATO member countries. With the creation of SNFL came the famous and fun-filled NATO cruises in which ships from several member countries participate in exercises between visits to ports of Europe and North America. NATO cruises continue to the present day.
   

• New Tribal Class destroyers were commissioned in the 1970s. The first to arrive in Halifax was HMCS Iroquois (280). She was followed by Huron, Algonquin and Athabaskan – not necessarily in that order. These were super-modern for the time and had extremely fast computing systems. A whole new school was created on the Dartmouth side of the harbour at NAD for teaching operational and technical aspects to sailors that would serve in the ships.
   

• We got our old uniforms back in 1987 – well sort of! I say that because the bellbottomed trousers, gun shirts, lanyard, collar and typical sailor caps were not part of the kit for Master Seaman and below as they were before unification. Instead, they were kitted in jacket, regular dress slacks, white shirt and tie, and peaked cap. Perhaps this was a good thing, because I remember being refused entry to posh establishments in foreign ports while wearing the old sailor suit because it didn’t include a tie. They wouldn’t accept the lanyard as a tie!
   

One of the greatest disappointments of many who served during the Cold War was that they never experienced action. Of course those who served in Korea saw some action. The remainder of us simulated hundreds of firings during exercises at sea and while training on simulators, but we never fired a real shot in anger. We were in the Cold War, with the Soviet Bloc being our potential threat. We did see lots of Soviet ships at sea though; we even shadowed them from time to time. Perhaps it’s best that we didn’t see action, because what we saw up close of their weaponry when shadowing Soviet warships had most of us shaking in our boots.

Despite the fact that we didn’t do any actual fighting, our ships we did see a lot of sea time, especially prior to the fuel crisis of the early seventies. We’d sail off on three-month cruises, sometimes even longer, and spend our time participating in exercises and visiting foreign ports.

The following, then, are stories contributed by men (so far only men, but women are invited to contribute) who served in the Canadian Navy during the Cold War. Most contain ‘by lines’. Those, where the author is indicated as ‘Harry Bagg,’ are ones where the author does not want to be identified, but thinks his story is interesting.