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1945 - The Bride is Impressed With Many Things
A London girl whose home was so badly damaged in a German bombing raid that the family was forced to vacate, Mrs. Earl Stamp, a British war bride, has arrived at the home of her husband’s sister, Mr. and Mrs. Howard Bridge, R. R. 7, Simcoe.
A daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Porter of London, Mrs. Stamp was formerly Violet Porter, and she was married to Sgt. Earl Stamp on March 21, 1943. Making the long trip here with his mother was their baby son, Roy, who was just a year old on Friday. Mrs. Stamp and the baby had a good trip over and did not experience any sickness enroute.
"The Red Cross was just wonderful," declared Mrs. Stamp in paying tribute to the work done by representatives of that organization in providing comforts for these girls who have left the only homes they have ever known to take up residence in the country of their husbands.
"The food here reminds me of pre-war days in England," she said. "Over there we got enough to live on, but that was about all." Mrs. Stamp is much impressed with the great variety of food to be had here, but she told The Reformer that she was eagerly looking forward to sampling that delicacy, corn on the cob. She has heard so much about it that she can hardly wait to try it.
She has had a great time shopping in the stores here and can hardly believe that she can purchase almost anything without having to tender coupons for it as was the case in England where practically everything has been rationed. She was amazed in the manner in which clerks in stores here go to the trouble of wrapping up every purchase. In England, she said, you walked into a store and left with your purchase without any kind of a wrapper. The paper shortage accounted for that. While on the subject of paper, Mrs. Stamp expressed amazement at the size of Canadian newspapers. "Pages and pages" was the way she described them, and then proceeded to outline with her hands the size of wartime British papers, about as large as our tabloids, with only a few pages at that.
"It seems so airy over here," Mrs. Stamp stated when asked what impressed her most about this country. She said that she was simply amazed at the vast spaces of open land to be seen.
Preference for Canadian cigarettes to English smokes. Mentioning the fact that England had experienced a "heavy" snowfall last winter, Mrs. Stamp declared that she was looking forward to seeing an honest-to-goodness Canadian sample of the "beautiful" next winter. She was informed of the overabundant falls of last winter.
Mrs. Stamp did not say too much about the German blitzes, which her family experienced in 1939 and 1940. They spent every night in the shelter from six o’clock in the evening until six the next morning. She described the buzz-bombs as the most terrifying, particularly when the motor could be heard to stop, when it was known that they would land in the vicinity. The rocket bombs were not bad, she said, as their presence was not known until they had exploded.
Her husband enlisted on September 3, 1939, and after training at Petawawa, went overseas the next year. He went to France on D-Day and has since served in Belgium, Holland and Germany, being in the latter country at present. He is the son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Roy Stamp. Mrs. Stamp’s father served as C. P. O. with the Royal Navy in the First Great War aboard the battleship, "Royal Oak," and saw action in the Battle of Jutland. Her sister, Leading Wren Frances Porter, is a member of the Women’s Royal Naval Service
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