WHEN he was nine years old, Dan Harris went to live with his aunt in Canada.

A wee Glasgow boy, used to the hustle and bustle of life in the busy city, suddenly found his life turned upside down….but it wasn’t all bad.

“I was elated when I was introduced to the Graham family, Scottish immigrants who owned the local grocery shop,” says Dan.

Glasgow Times: Handout photograph supplied by Dan Harris from East Kilbride. Dan is pictured at right in 1941 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada with aunt Ann and cousins Jimmy and Helen. Dan, age 90 was evacuated to Canada from Glasgow in 1940 and returned home in

“My joy continued when I was taken to the only post office/newsagents, and introduced to Mr and Mrs Munro, who were from the North of Scotland. All of the above made a fuss of this wee boy from Glasgow. I was in heaven. They sold candy too…..”

Dan got in touch to share some more of his Canada memories, after our recent features on Glasgow families who emigrated for a better life.

Dan was one of 2664 young people evacuated by the Children’s Overseas Reception Board (the ‘CORBy’ ) during the Second World War. On August 10, 1940, he left Greenock on the SS Duchess of York, bound for Canada, where he would spend the next four years.

“My mother was one of a family of four boys and three girls who grew up in the Cowcaddens area of Glasgow,” he explains. “The eldest daughter Annie emigrated alone to Ontario at the age of 20. She got a job as a domestic servant and became an excellent cook. She met and married a Scotsman, Andy, from Kilbarchan.

Glasgow Times: Handout photograph supplied by Dan Harris from East Kilbride. Dan is pictured in September 1940 at right with cousins Jimmy and Helen in Toronto, Canada..Dan, age 90 was evacuated to Canada from Glasgow in 1940 and returned home in 1944. ..For Glasgow

“I lived with Annie and her two children, when I was evacuated, in a rural area outside Hamilton, Ontario.

“Our neighbourhood was home to people from all over Europe. Our nearest neighbours on one side were Serbians and one day, a Polish man turned up and started felling trees on the other. His family lived in a tent while he and his eldest son built a wooden house, during their free time from work.”

The area had no pavements or street lighting and, worst of all, says Dan, no sewerage system.

“We were lucky as we had a fresh water supply because there was an airport across the road,” he says.“So between our house and the city boundary, people obtained their water supply by drilling a hole in their back yard (nobody had back gardens) and pumping the water up manually.”

Annie and Andy built their own house, he adds. “Andy never completed the basement before he enlisted and it always flooded when it rained,” says Dan. “Guess who bailed out the water?”

Dan also often drew the short straw when it came to the lack of flush toilets, he recalls with a grimace.

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“Briefly, the solution in our house was for me to dig a hole in the back yard and dispose of the contents of the toilet bucket,” he groans. “Try doing that at the age of nine in the winter.”

Being so rural, there was no postal service. Dan’s joy at discovering the Scottish families who owned the grocer’s and the newsagent, was short-lived.

“My aunt told me she did not go to either of these stores, because she wanted to keep her privacy,” he says. “There was no bus service then. So I walked a mile to the nearest city post office, and back home, once a week for three years until at last we got a bus service….”

The CORB scheme came to an abrupt end when the evacuation ship SS City of Benares, carrying 90 children bound for homes in Canada, was torpedoed and sunk. Many people, including 77 of the 90 CORB children, died in the tragedy.