Dr. C.M. Johnston's Project

Stanley D. Gaudin

On a spring day in 1941, Professor Robert McCracken, a theologian at McMaster University, received a distressed undergraduate visitor, Stanley (Stan) Gaudin. He began by telling McCracken that he was both a Christian and a pacifist, and therefore opposed to war in all its forms. But in the same breath he denounced Nazi Germany, with whom Canada was at war, as a uniquely evil threat to the Christian and democratic way of life. He also confessed to being guilt-ridden by the number of McMaster classmates who had already put themselves in harm's way for the sake of their country while he stayed at home in comfort and security. Whatever words of counsel McCracken may have dispensed, this "fine upstanding lad" eventually resolved his dilemma by enlisting for active service against the overseas menace he deplored -- his pacifism notwithstanding. Yet even before that happened, he had dutifully accepted military training in the McMaster Contingent of the Canadian Officers' Training Corps. Obviously he had not been disposed to claim the conscientious objector status to which his pacifism might have entitled him.
The religious community in which Stan Gaudin had been raised had also been seized with "conflicting loyalties" between conscience and country. The United Church's pacifist wing was ultimately overshadowed, however, by the majority of church members who acquiesced, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, in Ottawa's decision to go to war in 1939. But for totally committed pacifists both in and outside that and other churches, the popular notion of the so-called Good War - as World War II came to be styled -- was anathema. They, like Stan for a time, refused to be swayed by the ideological or personal considerations that later caused him so much anguish, and they continued to inveigh against Canada's participation in the conflict. But in the climate of crisis that gripped the country, particularly in 1940 when it seemed certain that Britain was about to be invaded and conquered by Nazi Germany, whatever influence they had virtually expired.

The Christian commitment and pacifist leanings of McCracken's agitated student visitor had been forged early on. Stan Gaudin was born on 8 September, 1914 in the small community of Woodford, Ontario, the second son of a Methodist parson and his wife, the Rev. Wm. Murray and Margaret Gaudin -- indeed born in the parsonage itself. Only a month before his birth the Great War had erupted in Europe, a conflict that soon assumed unimaginable proportions and engaged the manpower and resources of Canada and the rest of the British Empire. The association of Stan's birth with these horrendous events and his father's own strong feelings on the subject doubtless helped to shape the pacifist inclinations of his growing-up years, not to mention his early desire to become a parson like his father.

As it turned out, however, comparatively few of those years would be spent in Woodford. Following the untimely death of his father, his mother moved the family to Toronto when she remarried. But she kept it in the family. Her second husband was Hedley Gaudin, a distant cousin of her first and several years her senior. The young Stan, doubtless grateful to see a father figure again, readily took to calling the amicable Hedley "Dad". The stepfather owned and operated a corner store on Hampton Avenue off the Danforth, with living quarters in the same building. It was here that Stan, the transplanted small town native, would spend the remainder of his boyhood and most of his adolescence. For a time the family attended the strongly evangelical People's Church, then located on Bloor Street, while Stan was being educated at the local elementary school.

His next academic stop was Jarvis Collegiate Institute, which he entered in the fall of 1928. During his high school days he went out for soccer and track and gave a good account of himself. He also began attending the popular Boys' Club of Danforth United Church and made a new circle of friends. On weekends and summer vacations he worked at a number of odd jobs, from delivery boy to farm labourer, to help pay his way in the Gaudin household. He also served occasionally as a sales clerk at the large Eaton's department store, the part-time employer of many a Toronto adolescent who wanted to augment his or her pocket money. Meanwhile, at least one smitten Jarvis classmate, who later recalled Stan's "wonderful personality" and "good looks", made a point, she said, of walking down the Danforth to his parents' store in hopes of "catching sight of him". A younger country cousin, who regularly vacationed at the Gaudins to get a taste of big city life, remembers how she enjoyed his company and conversation. Admittedly she had also looked forward to the treats of candies and cookies in his stepfather's store. Stan in turn spent several summer holidays at her family's farm and became "quite well known" in their rural community.

After matriculating from Jarvis Collegiate in 1933, Stan enrolled not at university or college as some thought he should but at the Eastern High School of Commerce with the obvious intention of getting some training for the working world. It may have been at this time that for one reason or another, never explained on paper, he underwent a crisis of conscience and decided to "set aside religion" and any thought of pursuing theological studies. One can only speculate. Perhaps he had come to think that the United Church and churches in general were failing to address the stark social problems thrown up by the Depression in the early 'thirties. As later evidence showed, he was certainly sensitive to the social dislocation he saw all about him in Toronto. Or - to put it on a more spiritual plane - was it because the churches no longer seemed to be preaching the need for the truly "Godly life" that he sought to emulate?

Whatever the reasons for Stan's disenchantment, his stint at the school of commerce was instrumental in landing him a "junior statistician's" position at the Beardmore Leather Company on Front Street. He seemed to be on his way to the business career he had resolved to pursue. Yet within a year he went through a profound religious experience, thanks to the influence of what he identified only as an "interdenominational body". It may have been any number of organizations, among them, the World Evangelical Alliance or even the so-called Oxford Group (later known as Moral Rearmament). In the chaos of the Depression the Oxford Group had thrown out a resounding challenge which may have resonated with Stan Gaudin: if only people would "fully commit their lives to God they would, in the future, see [major] transformations in society and national affairs". In any case, whatever organization made its impact on Stan, it was obviously decisive, because he was led back not only to religion but to the theological studies he had once contemplated.

The upshot was his decision to enroll at Toronto Bible College (TBC). Over a three-year period, 1935-1938, this son of the parsonage did full justice to the courses he took there and was named president and valedictorian of his graduating class. Apparently he conveyed a "splendid spiritual message" for the occasion, to quote his Jarvis C.I. admirer, who had eagerly attended the proceedings held at Varsity Arena. Stan's spiritual restoration seemed complete. Indeed, even before his graduation day arrived he had already served as president of a religiously based youth fraternity chapter and instructed such groups as the Boy Cubs and the Explorers. These activities, to which he attached much importance, could be regarded as the start of what he now liked to call his career in "Christian Education". But even the spiritually restored had to eat. To support himself at college he had worked summers as a groundsman at a Muskoka resort and as a qualified chauffeur in Toronto.

Anxious to further his education, Stan next set his sights on McMaster University, the Baptist institution that had left Toronto for Hamilton in 1930. He was encouraged to go there by one of his college supervisors, a McMaster graduate, who in his letter of recommendation stated that "Stanley would do credit to our university". Not only that, Stan had already established a denominational connection by attending College Street Baptist Church and teaching its adult Bible class. In September 1938 he was duly accepted at McMaster and registered in a three-year philosophy course, one of the recommended pathways to formal theological studies.

In his second year at McMaster, thanks to his academic proficiency, Stan was awarded an exchange scholarship arranged under the auspices of the National Federation of Canadian University Students. It enabled him to spend the session 1939-40 at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He did not disappoint his McMaster sponsors, carrying off an overall 1st class standing in the courses he took, principally in philosophy, psychology, and Greek, subjects required for work in theology. Back at McMaster, while matching the UBC academic record, he also sought his usual extracurricular outlets in soccer and track and field, and did well in both. In his graduating year he performed ably on the championship Senior soccer team and, to quote his Marmor "Obit", was also "a serious threat on the harrier course". Not content with that, he branched out to become a member of the fencing team as well, on the face of it an unusual choice for a pacifist.

Off the playing field, Stan took an interest in the Dramatic Society, at least to the extent of serving as an enthusiastic stagehand. More seriously, as one might expect, he took an active part in the work of the McMaster Christian Union (MCU) and in the proceedings of the Philosophy Club, which was in the throes of bravely trying to popularize its subject for "the man-in-the-street." The MCU, the product of a merger of several campus religious organizations, had recently introduced a variety of new programs and brought in, as well, a broad range of distinguished speakers to address the "current problems of the Christian world". Committed to enhancing the Christian life and spirit of the campus, its principal mandate, it was, by the time a receptive Stan joined it, also hinting at a social gospel role. The MCU stressed, for example, the need in the Depression 'thirties for more social work in the community and highlighted such problems as juvenile delinquency and the bad housing conditions that often spawned it. Stan's own sense of social commitment - clearly fuelled by his spiritual one -- found release in his summer service with Frontier College. The organization dispatched university students to work camps in the North where they put in a full working day and then gave instruction in English and other subjects to their less fortunate fellow workers, many of them European immigrants hungry for learning and inspiration. According to his supervisor, Stan readily met both challenges.

Like other classmates who would later serve and die in the war, Kenner Arrell [HR] among them, Stan also joined the Men's International Relations Club. In those august surroundings, dominated usually by history students and their professors, he doubtless made known his own strong views on the pressing need to preserve peace around the globe. His commitment to these activities and his congenial personality earned Stan the affection and admiration not only of faculty like McCracken but of his classmates, many of whom, a few years his junior, clearly looked up to him. A former theology student, for example, who played table tennis with him, remembers him as "a prince of a guy". A little more staidly, the fellow graduand who prepared his Marmor Obit wanted the record to show that "Stan has filled an honourable position" at the University. As events proved, he would maintain that "honourable position" for the rest of his short life.

In the end, he did not take his divinity training at his alma mater. Reasons for this are hard to come by. Perhaps his McMaster mentors, believing that his prospects as a pacifist student might be better outside wartime Canada, recommended that he attend a fellow Baptist institution in a still neutral United States. Whatever the case, Stan applied to the Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, was accepted, and proceeded there on a scholarship. He entered the junior year of the BD program and made his academic presence felt as he had at McMaster and UBC, earning an equal mixture of A's and high B's. He was well regarded by both faculty and fellow students, glowingly described as "studious, gentlemanly, and always a reservoir of Christian grace and kindliness".

Only one year was spent at Eastern Baptist, however. At the end of it -- by this time America was also officially at war with both Nazi Germany and Japan -- an agonizing Stan finally decided to suspend his schooling, shelve his pacifist beliefs, and enlist for active service. Given his overarching concerns about the Nazi menace, now compounded by the Japanese one, he appears to have had little choice in the matter. In any case, on 20 August 1942 he opted for the RCAF and signed on at No. 1 Manning Depot in Toronto. Like so many others, including former McMaster students John Yost [HR], Henry Novak [HR], and Franklin Zurbrigg [HR], he was soon fully involved in the work of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, the Anglo-Canadian arrangement that produced qualified air crew for service overseas.


Stan was stationed at Manning Depot for over two months - 5 September - 23 November 1942 - so he had plenty of time to become accustomed to its regimen. It was designed to promote a quality called airmanship, but consisted for the most part of activities that seemed more appropriate for fledgling infantrymen. Thus Stan and the hundreds of others in his group were obliged to submit to copious drill and marching exercises, musketry practice, barrack-like quarters, a rigorous program of physical education, and the inevitable lectures and medical inspections. Finally, on 24 November 1942, his stay at Manning Depot came to an end with his assignment to No. 14 Service Flying Training School at Aylmer, Ontario. But he did no flying there either, only the customary guard and tarmac duty that was the lot of every neophyte RCAF recruit. Guard duty is self-explanatory; tarmac duty could include anything from pushing aircraft about to filling in runway potholes. His posting at Aylmer was a comparatively long one, probably because there was a build-up of trainees at the next stop on the so-called pipeline of advancement. Once the pressure eased Stan finally proceeded on 7 March 1943 to the next stage of his instruction at No. 1 Initial Training School in Toronto. There trainees were tested and then sorted into various categories of aircrew, ranging from pilot to air gunner.

Like Jack Yost before him, Stan was selected for pilot training and on 16 May was allowed to move on to No. 10 Elementary Flying Training School at Pendleton, Ontario. Again he was successful, this time in a crucial phase of flight training that had a habit of rudely ending budding aerial careers. Then on 11 July a pleased Stan, recently promoted Leading Aircraftsman, was posted to St. Hubert, Quebec for the next challenging phase at No. 13 Service Flying Training School. After some two months at St. Hubert he seems to have come down with a bout of homesickness for his alma mater. He wrote the McMaster registrar requesting the revival of his alumni membership and a subscription to the Alumni News. The desire to be re-connected was probably inspired by his contacts with other graduates in Montreal and by the conspicuous presence of two alumni on the station. Russell Bailey served as the resident meteorologist while Pilot Officer Peter Waugh appears to have been his flying instructor on the Harvard and twin-engined Avro Anson trainers. In what is probably a masterstroke of understatement Stan finished his letter to the registrar by observing: "Then there has also been Montreal, which, in itself, is something of an education". This minister's son, committed to the Christian species of education, did not elaborate.

Aided by P/O Waugh's friendly instruction and by the skills he had already acquired, Stan readily passed muster at St. Hubert and on 29 September 1943 was gratified to receive his pilot's wings. At the same time he was promoted Sergeant Pilot, as was customary in all cases, and then, because of the proficiency he had shown, appointed Pilot Officer. Although qualified for aircrew his training was not yet over. On 6 November 1943 he was dispatched to No. 1 General Reconnaissance School at Summerside, Prince Edward Island. In that scenic setting he was introduced to the rudiments of patrol work at sea, with the emphasis on anti- submarine exercises, vital at a time when the German U-boat was still a threat on the Atlantic.

On 15 January 1944, after the Summerside assignment ended, Stan was given a two-week embarkation leave. His days in Canada were clearly numbered. But he made good use of them, visiting family and close friends in Toronto and elsewhere. On a brief stop in Hamilton he made a point of calling into the McMaster Alumni Office to say his good-byes. He doubtless paid his most emotional visit to the young woman who had recently become his fiancee, Edna Hulse, a resident of Hartley Avenue in Toronto. They had met after he joined the RCAF and obviously put off wedding plans until his return from overseas.

By this time the Gaudin family had moved from Hampton Avenue to Walmer Road in Toronto and turned part of their newly acquired three-storied dwelling into a rooming house. On his last leave Stan took time out to build kitchen cupboards in the new home. The results, according to her visiting niece, meant more to Mrs. Gaudin than "if the greatest carpenter in Toronto had built them". That same niece, Stanley's country cousin, wistfully recalled the end of that leave and his departure for overseas, the memory etched in her mind like a photograph. Early one morning he woke her up to say goodbye and then saluted her and his mother from the curb before stepping into a taxicab and disappearing in the direction of the train station. That was the last they laid eyes on him. They were not the only ones emotionally assailed that day. Their anguish must have been fully shared by fiancee Edna.

On 30 January 1944, Stan reported to the RCAF's No1 Y Depot in Lachine, Quebec. He was shortly put on a train to Halifax and by 14 February - ironically Valentine's Day, a poignant one certainly for the family and Edna - he was poised to go overseas. He enjoyed a safe journey to England, on a typical ten-day crossing, arriving at his destination on the 24 th . After disembarkation procedures were dealt with, he was dispatched, as were all arriving Canadian airmen, to the Personnel Reception Centre in Bournemouth for lectures, orientation, medical examinations, and the receipt of flying kit and battle dress. Following this ritual, Stan was promoted Flying Officer and on 2 May 1944 assigned to No. 15 Advanced Flying Unit (AFU) at Long Newnton in Gloucestershire. There on twin-engined Airspeed Oxfords his instructors set about enhancing his ability to manage multi-engined aircraft, like the Vickers Wellington bomber he would ultimately fly. The following month he spent a week on an intensive course at No. 1 Beam Approach School, which involved blind or instrument flying that relied on a radio beam to guide pilots to safe landings. Then on 20 June 1944 it was back to Long Newnton and more testing on the Airspeed Oxford.

That exercise completed, on 1 August 1944 Stan was posted to Coastal Command's No. 172 Squadron, an anti-U-boat outfit whose unequivocal motto was (roughly translating the Latin expression), "We Ambush the Ambushers". The squadron was in the midst of being transferred to Limavady, near Londonderry, Northern Ireland so it was there that Stan caught up with it on 9 September 1944. The station at Limavady, planned just before the war, had been rushed to completion and become operational in early 1941 to help protect the so-called northwestern approaches from mounting U-boat assaults. For this purpose Squadron 172 was equipped with upgraded Wellington Mark XIVs, which carried a crew of six and could achieve a top speed of some 280 miles an hour. Stan realized soon enough that the instruction he had received at Summerside and later at Long Newnton would shortly be put to highly practical and quite possibly violent use. For some days he was familiarized with the ways and workings of the Wellington before being sent out on actual patrol duties.

On 5 October 1944, barely a month after his arrival on the station, his Wellington #HF 450 encountered problems while returning from an operational flight over the Atlantic. His captain later described what followed in a letter to Stan's mother:

. Returning from our . Patrol we were unable to get to our base [because of ] weather conditions, and radio aids were of no use either at that time. I decided that we would have to abandon the aircraft . so found a town on the coast & prepared the crew for the jump. Stan prepared me with my kit and helped the other boys also, opening the escape hatch beside me on the floor .. [W]hen I told him to go first, he quietly stepped forward and told me he would stay with me and help the others out first . over [a] narrow strip [of land] .. [A]s [the jump] had taken more time than I had anticipated I turned back along the shore line for another run. As I was going to turn the aircraft back onto its course again I had engine trouble, so told Stan to leave, which he did .. The [engine] trouble was slight actually so I got everything under control again, settled the aircraft and left it myself. [After] landing I realized that Stan was probably in the water ....

Unlike the others he was indeed. And, as his distressed captain discovered a few hours later, Stan had subsequently drowned. His body was recovered and buried with full military honours. Had he left the aircraft earlier with his crewmates, as urged, he may well have survived along with them. As his superior lamented, Stan's "gallant act of self sacrifice cost [him] his life". Like that life itself, its ending was eminently "honourable", as the Marmor Obit had once aptly put it. One of the first McMaster people to note that quality had been his former advisor, Professor McCracken. On 3 December 1944 the grieving theologian was among the many friends and dignitaries who joined the family and spoke at Stan's moving memorial service at Knox Presbyterian Church in Toronto.

Stanley David Gaudin is buried in the Drumachose (Christ Church) Church of Ireland Churchyard, Limavady, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

C.M. Johnston

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: The following provided vital help and encouragement: Ronald Arkwright, R.C. Bevington, Gertrude Broderick, David Holm, Melody Mazuk, Pauline McKenzie, Angela Parsons, Mark Steinacher, Wm. Stephen, Lillian Stratford, Norma (Lorimer) Swanston, Douglas Taylor, Perry Teatro, and Bernard Trotter. Gertrude Broderick, Stanley Gaudin's cousin, furnished valuable documentation and recollections. Ronald Arkwright kindly supplied reminiscences, references, and sources.

SOURCES: National Archives of Canada: Wartiimgme Personnel Records / Service Record of Flying Officer Stanley D. Gaudin; Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Commemorative Information, F/O Stanley D. Gaudin; communications from Gertrude Broderick, 2, 20 Dec. 2001; phone interview with Norma (Lorimer) Swanston, 2 Dec. 2001; Canadian Baptist Archives / McMaster Divinity College: McMaster University Student File 7350, Stanley D. Gaudin, admissions application statement; Biographical File, Stanley D. Gaudin (contains letter from Squadron Leader Geoffrey Alington to Mrs. Gaudin, 23 Oct. 1944); McMaster University Library / W. Ready Archives: Marmor 1937 , 76, 1938-39 , 72, 73, 110, 1941, 19; Silhouette , 14, 21, 24 Nov. 1940, 5 Dec. 1940; McMaster Alumni News , 15 Oct. 1943, 15 Feb. 1944, 22 Feb. 1945; University of British Columbia / Registrar's Office: transcript of Stanley D. Gaudin, Dec. 1940; Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (EBTS) / Registrar's Office: transcript of Stanley D. Gaudin, 20 Sept. 1941, President's Report to the College Board of Trustees, EBTS, December 12, 1944, The Easterner , IV (Jan. 1945), 4; Robert J. McCracken, The Conflict of Loyalties: A Book of Sermons (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), 80; Thomas P. Socknat, Witness against War: Pacifism in Canada, 1900-1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), chap. 7; Garth Lean, Frank Buchman: A Life (London: Constable, 1985), 154 passim, 191-8, 199-202; John W. Blake, Northern Ireland in the Second World War (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2000 ed.), 322-23,330-31, 341; Spencer Dunmore, Wings for Victory: The Remarkable Story of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan in Canada, (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1994), 350, 352, 355 (and chaps. 3 and 4); Les Allison and Harry Hayward, They Shall Grow Not Old: A Book of Remembrance (Brandon, MA: Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum Inc., 1996, 2 nd printing), 255.

Internet:
"No. 172 Squadron, RAF", www.rafcommands.currantbun.com/Coastal/172C.html;
"No. 15 Advanced Flying Unit (AFU)", www.ramsburyatwar.com.

[ For a related biography, see Albert Harry Mildon ]