Dr. C.M. Johnston's Project

John G. Heimrich

A native of Kitchener, Ontario, John (Bud) Heimrich was born on 8 January 1923, the second child of Carl John and his Irish-born wife, Dorothy (Gilchrist) Heimrich. He joined an older sister, named Dorothy after her mother. Their father's family had ancient German roots. The first Heimrich appeared in Ontario in 1856, in the person of Stephen Heimrich, Bud's great-grandfather. After he and his family had arrived in the New World, apparently in the 1840s, they had settled initially in the United States where they may have been partially acculturated to North American ways before venturing on to Canada. In any case, by the closing years of the century, the now extended Heimrich family was virtually indistinguishable from the rest of Ontario's mainstream population.

This was equally true of the family into which Elias Heimrich, Stephen's son and Bud's grandfather, married in 1891. The Rosenbergers were descended from people who had been part of an earlier incursion of German-speaking immigrants. At the turn of the nineteenth century, in the company of other Mennonites, they had followed the so- called Conestoga Trail from their German settlements in Pennsylvania to the British frontier colony of Upper Canada, which was actively seeking to attract such “sober, well disposed” citizens. Along with Loyalist refugees from the American Revolution these Mennonites could be considered genuine Canadian pioneers, that is, if their Aboriginal forerunners are excluded. The newcomers and later arrivals laid the foundations of what became Waterloo County and the flourishing city of Berlin in Upper Canada's ultimate successor, the Province of Ontario. In time, as the Heimrichs would, they became fully assimilated even if some of them spoke German amongst themselves or used the language in their church services.

Perhaps the degree of assimilation can best be personified in Elias' son and Bud's father, Carl. Born in Kitchener in 1892, when it was still known as Berlin, he had moved with his family to Stratford and received his early education there. Later he returned to the city of his birth, where he eventually trained to become an accountant. Though raised a Lutheran, he adopted his wife's faith and worshipped as a Presbyterian in what became the United Church. Along the way he had also made the ultimate commitment as a British subject -- as Canadians were then styled. He enlisted and served overseas in the Great War (later dubbed World War I) as a lieutenant in the 108 th Battalion, a militia unit mobilized and assigned to the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Before hostilities ended, however, he transferred to the new and exciting fighting arm known as the Royal Flying Corps, later re-named the Royal Air Force (RAF).

Ironically, while Carl was thus putting himself in harm's way in the service of his native country, an ugly Germanophobia, fuelled by war hysteria, disfigured Berlin and other communities where Germans had settled over the years. It led in some instances to the vandalizing of German-Canadian businesses and cultural clubs, the defacing of monuments, the removal of officials, and finally the symbolic renaming of Berlin itself after Britain's larger than life Minister of War, Lord Kitchener, whose likeness glowered from wartime recruiting posters.

It would appear, however, that families like the Heimrichs, so long entrenched in the community and so identified with its interests, not to mention the war itself, suffered no indignities or undue stress during this troubling period. Indeed, as one authority notes, for the most part even more recent arrivals direct from Germany, “went on [with their lives] almost as usual”, at least so long as they refrained from speaking German or praising the Vaterland in public. To do so would have been extremely difficult if not out of the question for the likes of Carl Heimrich. So far as he was concerned his fatherland – if the term had to be used at all -- was clearly Canada and, as a nephew and namesake remarked, he likely “knew only a handful of German words”. It may have followed that his son Bud would know even fewer and be even less inclined to dwell on his ethnic heritage.

In 1928 Bud's formal education, unlike his father's, began in the re-christened city of Kitchener. A former neighbour warmly reminisced how she and a “friendly and helpful” companion named Bud Heimrich went to kindergarten together on their first day at the Victoria Public School. Over the next few years Bud completed the work up to the 6 th Grade and then moved on to what would later be called a senior public, the Suddaby School, which taught Grades 7 and 8. Those who knew him at the time recall his mounting interest in aviation, reflected in part in the impressive model airplane suspended from his bedroom ceiling. The interest soon bordered on a passion that never flagged and would eventually be fulfilled when he joined the RCAF. His father's wartime service with the storied Royal Flying Corps doubtless accounted for some if not most of the passion. For Bud's generation it was also fuelled by tales of the legendary Billy Bishop, the Canadian flying ace of the Great War.

In 1936, following the completion of his primary education, Bud entered the Kitchener Collegiate Institute and Vocational School (KCI). One might have expected, given his interest in things aeronautical, that he would have joined the school's Aviation Club but there is no evidence that he ever did so. Perhaps his own reading and research had propelled him well beyond what that club could offer by way of enlightenment. Nor is there any mention in The Grumbler, the collegiate's distinctively named yearbook, of any extracurricular activities he may have entered into. On the other hand, the 1940 edition did feature a fine sketch portrait he did of the recently deceased Governor General, Lord Tweedsmuir, whose rousing adventure tales under the name of John Buchan were well known to that generation of young readers. Bud, the aspiring artist, was thus already displaying his considerable talent, often accompanying a local professional to sketch and paint scenic stretches of the nearby Grand River. What he called a hobby mattered enough to him that he later made a point of entering it on his military service record.

Even if his extracurricular activities at KCI appear limited Bud was certainly absorbed in many pursuits beyond its perimeter. For one thing, he spent at least some of his after school hours in part time employment in order to augment his pocket money. He was also an active member of a youth organization at Trinity United Church, his family's place of worship. Moreover, he enthusiastically enlisted in the Boy Scouts and earned the requisite badges that qualified him for appointment to King's Scout, the highest rank attainable.

As well, Bud joined the local YMCA where he enjoyed working with young people. He did this through a Yclub called Pan Politae, a Greek phrase for “Universal Brotherhood” suggested by a supportive high school teacher. It was a popular organization whose teenage members met regularly on a social basis and indulged in indoor sports like basketball, volleyball, and tennis. But that was only the beginning. In concert with a counterpart organization at the YWCA the club also arranged much sought after weekly dances and a special New Year's Eve event, featuring the performances of local bands. One of the eagerly awaited social highlights was the annual excursion to Burlington's renowned and, for that day and age, elegant Brant Inn, whose Lido Deck was a favourite dance venue for high school and university students.

In addition to its social round the club also discharged certain civic duties. Apart from working with younger groups, it saw to the maintenance and repair of the Y's Kitchener premises and its summer camp site on Georgian Bay. It organized, as well, morale-boosting visits to shut-ins and distributed gift hampers to the needy on Christmas Eve. As a former member of Pan Politae recalled, it “provided a wholesome outlet for teen years' energy [and] … encouraged civic responsibility”. In all or most of the club's activities a dedicated Bud would have played a role in the years before the war. A fellow member and close personal friend, Richard Bryden, remembers him as an “outgoing, committed, and all round person” gifted with the ability to make and keep friends.

Bud usually spent part of his summers vacationing with the family at the picturesque cottage community of Sable Beach on Lake Huron. These holidays were enjoyed in the company of close Kitchener friends, the Volkers, whose daughter, Joyce, recalls those comparatively halcyon times that tried to ignore the gathering storm of war across the Atlantic. She remembers too that the children played all manner of indoor and outdoor games, including the popular “Murder” in which an enthusiastic Bud usually sought the role of detective and crime-solver.

Meanwhile, it was at the Pan Politae's social functions that Bud reinforced the close relationship he had formed with YWCA member and fellow high school student, Muriel Weber, whose family was Mennonite. She recently recalled the “idyllic times” they spent together, sharing a wide range of activities: dancing, cycling, skating, skiing, archery, and horseback riding. In other words, little was left out. Muriel and the person she called “her buddy” also found time to visit one another's families whenever parties, special Sunday dinners, and countryside picnics were arranged. These many and varied activities reflected an age of innocence or near innocence that was about to expire in war and its aftermath.

Bud's schooling had also imposed its expected demands on his time. In 1941, after completing the Upper School work at KCI, he graduated with his senior matriculation, achieving average to above average grades overall. At this juncture the ever aspiring flyer wanted to realize his goal by enlisting forthwith in the RCAF. His intentions were only too well known to his family and Muriel Weber, who would soon become his fiancée in all but name. Bud's concerned and persuasive father, however, who had experienced war at first hand, urged him instead to attend university for at least a year before taking the fateful step of enlisting.

The obedient but doubtless disappointed Bud accepted the parental arrangement and subsequently elected to attend McMaster University, the Baptist institution that had relocated from Toronto to Hamilton's Westdale district some ten years before. Its respectable Christian credentials, comparatively modest tuition and residence fees, and proximity to Kitchener may have weighed heavily in the decision. One practice his accountant father expected Bud to follow at McMaster was to keep a record of all his payments and expenditures and to send home duplicates. Again the dutiful son would oblige.

To save money while living in North House, a section of the red brick residence, Edwards Hall, Bud bypassed the local Westdale laundry and regularly mailed home his soiled clothing for his mother to wash, iron, and return. An “awed” North House resident could only admire the practice, concluding that Bud's family was in straitened circumstances and sacrificing much on his behalf. But he would have been mistaken. The Heimrichs certainly seemed to have the means as well as the determination to see that their son benefited from a university education. For several years the family's breadwinner had been employed, presumably at a respectable salary, as credit and office manager at a Kitchener firm, Cluett-Peabody.

With his father's hearty endorsement, Bud planned eventually on a legal cum business career, specializing in labour relations. To that end he registered, at least, as agreed, for the freshman year, in the popular Political Economy Option (Course 9), a program fancied by those contemplating a life's work in law or commerce. He promptly enrolled in the Political Economy Club, which addressed a variety of themes in the course of the year. These ranged all the way from the recent growth of farmers' organizations to the war's impact on the nation's economy, now being regulated by, among others, Professor Kenneth Taylor, who had recently left McMaster to join the Wartime Prices and Trade Board in Ottawa. In his absence the “Polecon” Club was overseen by his former colleagues, the magisterial Burton Hurd and the colourfully eccentric Humfrey Michell.

Bud also engaged in what he appears to have avoided at KCI, a wide assortment of extracurricular activities – football, fencing, tennis, and boxing – almost as if he hoped to cram in as much as possible during the short interlude he planned on campus. A group picture taken for the 1942 Marmor shows him with the resourceful freshman football team that won the hotly contested intramural championship that season, beating out the hitherto undefeated Juniors. He may have wanted to try out for Varsity football but because of the war's catastrophic turn in the summer of 1940 intercollegiate competition in all sports had been suspended “for the duration”, the stock phrase of the time. It also meant that military training on campus had become compulsory, all physically fit male students being required to serve in the University's Contingent of the Canadian Officers' Training Corps (COTC). Bud was to be no exception and on specified days he was soon drilling and marching with his fellow students under the watchful eye of a demanding army sergeant-major. In due course Muriel Weber, with whom he kept in close touch through letters and visits home, received a picture of him, standing outside University Hall proudly attired in his COTC cadet uniform.

The lecture hall and the library, of course, also had their rightful place in the scheme of things at McMaster. Incoming students like Bud were asked on a questionnaire about their study habits and capacity to learn from lectures and textbooks. Bud indicated that he had no particular difficulty in these respects nor in “getting set for study”, provided he put together an adequate “work schedule”. Later on, however, he complained to his faculty advisor that study conditions in North House were far from ideal, citing “crowded conditions and inadequate lighting”. There was no question that space was at a premium in the residence, whose population that session almost doubled. Part of the increase was attributable to the arrival of RCAF personnel bent on taking a radio technicians course in Hamilton Hall, the science building.

In the circumstances Bud probably had no objection to the airmen's presence, which after all was a compelling reminder of his own wartime ambition. Nor in his complaint about study conditions – nothing was done about the lighting apparently -- did he mention another possible impediment to work, the boisterous distractions for which North House was supposed to be notorious. A fellow occupant who may have made his own unique contribution to the house's reputation was Gordon Holder [HR], a senior, who enlisted for active service at about the time Bud, the freshman, did. While inhabiting Edwards Hall they doubtless experienced what a writer for the Silhouette, the student weekly, had to say about the dawn of a resident's day:

We are roused in the morning by violent vibrations in the air emanating from the alarm clock mechanics. Then we lie in bed until the gravitational attraction of the rising sun hauls us out. Haven't you noticed how much harder it is to get up on a cold winter morning?

In the milder days of spring, 1942, Bud finished out an active and from all accounts a stimulating year. On his final examinations he achieved an overall third class standing, which qualified him to advance to the second year of his course. But he was not about to be sidetracked from his original ambition. Having honoured the arrangement with his father, he like Holder, who graduated that spring, went through with his plan to join up for active service. While Holder opted for the army, he, to no one's surprise, eagerly picked the service that he had long set his heart on. Perhaps an added spur was the thrilling achievement (real or inflated) of the parent RAF during the decisive Battle of Britain just two years before.

On 16 August Bud reported his decision to Elven Bengough, McMaster's congenial Registrar, with whom most students and graduates felt at ease, particularly those serving in the armed forces. Bud told Bengough that he had every intention of returning to McMaster after the war and commented favourably on his brief campus stay:

… The time which I have already spent at the university has been really enjoyable and full of new experiences for me and I shall not readily forget the worthwhile lessons which I received.

Four days before his message arrived on Bengough's desk Bud had formally enlisted in the RCAF at its recruiting office in London, Ontario. He was then given a leave to the end of the month after which he was told to report to No. 1 Manning Depot (MD) in Toronto, housed on the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE). Life in his chosen service began under the auspices of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP), the large scale Anglo-Canadian arrangement that turned the country into the so called Aerodrome of Democracy, designed to prepare thousands of air crew for combat duty overseas. The nineteen-year old Bud, who obviously relished “new experiences”, must have been excited by the novel regimen he encountered at “1 MD”, that is, apart from the mandatory inoculations and vaccinations that all newcomers had to undergo.

Bud, who had no doubt visited the CNE as a youngster – almost a rite of passage for most – now found it playing a far different role, its ‘Cow Palace” housing the uniformed human species rather than prize livestock. His life in North House may have prepared him for living at close quarters with strangers but the teeming Manning Depot went far beyond that experience. Even so, the gregarious Bud soon made new friends among the hundreds engaged in the almost endless marching and musketry drill that constituted much of the ritualistic life at the depot. He spent an inordinately long time there, however – nearly five months according to his service record -- and the once exciting experience must have begun to pall. There is no indication that he was hospitalized for any part of that time or given anything more than short leaves to reconnect with family and Muriel Weber. Consequently his protracted stay in Toronto must remain a minor mystery.

Finally, however, on 22 January 1943, Bud was sent to his first posting at No. 14 Service Flying Training School (SFTS) at Aylmer, Ontario. But he was still far from becoming airborne or anything like it. He did instead a mixture of guard and tarmac duty at the station until a place was found for him at the next training level. That materialized a full month later, on 21 February, at No. 6 Initial Training School (ITS), located in the old Normal School building on Jarvis Street in Toronto. It was a section of the city then notorious for its red light district, whose evils and hazards were graphically made known to young and for the most part innocent trainees. To add to its colourful reputation, the ITS was commanded by an unpopular officer, one of whose names was speedily corrupted into the seven- letter word, “Hen….”.

All that probably mattered to Bud was that he was about to embark at last on his formal training program, which at this stage admittedly amounted to an elaborate screening and selection process. The question Bud was soon asking himself was, “What trade will I finally be chosen for, pilot, navigator, or wireless operator air gunner?”, the three principal categories into which trainees were ultimately sorted at an ITS. Following a multitude of aptitude and skills tests, Bud was subjected to a psychological examination, conducted by professionals whom some disgruntled trainees dismissed as so many “witch doctors”. Bud's response to the experience can only be guessed at but one thing is certain. He must have been elated when in late April he received the answer he craved, namely that he had been selected for pilot instruction.

On 1 May he was promptly posted to No. 12 Elementary Flying Training School (EFTS) at Goderich, described by one trainee who hugely enjoyed his time there as a “little flying field perched on the edge of Lake Huron” and known quaintly in peacetime as Sky Harbour Airport. The enthusiastic Bud Heimrich must also have savoured the excitement of flying there though he would have been puzzled perhaps by the gushing sentiments of an English recruit long accustomed to rationing and austerity at home. For that young overseas arrival Goderich was a veritable

Nirvana…. It was soda fountains and malted milks and Big Band time on the juke box. Glenn Miller vied with Artie Shaw, Bing Crosby with Frank Sinatra …. And we were teenagers and servicemen let loose on a continent worshipping both.

Kitchener, Bud's home town, could boast of all these amenities and more, so he must have taken Goderich's acclaimed delights pretty much for granted.

At No. 12 EFTS he was instructed on the single-engined Tiger Moth rainer for over a month and ended up literally passing with flying colours, news of which he speedily relayed to his family and Muriel Weber. The boyhood dream was finally coming true. It was then on to more advanced instruction at No. 1 SFTS located at Camp Borden. A venerable military station -- at least by Canadian standards -- it had by the time Bud arrived been thoroughly refurbished and expanded to meet the compelling demands of another global conflict. At Borden Bud graduated to the powerful Harvard trainer and was put through the paces on an aircraft both challenging and rewarding for those entrusted with its controls.

By the third week of September, some three months after his arrival at Borden, Bud had virtually completed this final stage of his training. He achieved for the most part well above average grades in all categories, including general, Instrument, and night flying as well as “Character and Leadership”, always deemed an important consideration. The record also indicates that he had soloed some thirty hours in the day and nearly eleven at night. He emerged from all this activity with an overall mark of 75%, a standing which ordinarily ensured a commission. One account asserts that he was actually within four days of formally receiving his wings when disaster struck and ended his dream. Apparently his apprehensive mother had been seized with a premonition that he would not survive the training process and soon enough her worst fears were borne out.

On 22 September Bud took off solo from Borden bound for the satellite field at Edenvale – some twenty kilometers away -- on what was called an armament exercise. He was acting pilot aboard Harvard FE 946 when it unaccountably ran into trouble. A farmer in the vicinity later told a reporter for the Kitchener-Waterloo Record that he had seen a “low flying plane and a few minutes later heard it crash”. Bud died instantly of multiple injuries when – to quote one account – his Harvard “pancaked hard” and was virtually reduced to wreckage.

His McMaster friends reported rumours that an improperly buckled safety harness had accounted for the tragedy. Still another student heard that Bud had inadvertently struck equipment and other obstructions carelessly left on a runway. These stories, however, were never confirmed in any official record. In any case, on the day of his death Bud was posthumously promoted Temporary Sergeant, in effect an official indication that he had for all intents and purposes met the necessary training requirements. Meanwhile his funeral services were being arranged in Kitchener at the family's Trinity United Church. Attending the ceremony with the grieving Heimrichs were an equally stricken Muriel Weber and her parents. To add to the poignancy of the occasion Bud had planned on his next weekend leave to present Muriel with a diamond engagement ring.

Bud Heimrich was one of the many victims of what an historian has aptly called the “Great Canadian Air Battle”, one waged not against the formal enemy but rather the assorted hazards of the training program. In the course of the BCATP's operation over 800 trainees perished in flying accidents in Canada, 55% of whom were Canadian, the rest made up of British, Australasian, and foreign airmen. To this figure would have to be added the hundreds of trained personnel such as instructors and members of operational training units who also suffered death by misadventure in Canada.

John Gilchrist Heimrich is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, Kitchener, Ontario, and is commemorated at Trinity United Church.

C.M. Johnston

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Richard Bryden, James Cross, Kathleen Garay, John Haddock, Joyce (Volker) Headlam, Carl Heimrich, Ted Heimrich (John G. Heimrich's cousins), Mary Huber, Janice Keeter, Kenneth Morgan, Katherine Patchett, Dorothy (Heimrich) Pugh (sister), Muriel (Weber) Schadek, Norman Shrive, and Bernard Trotter, all contributed much help and encouragement. Carl Heimrich kindly and patiently supplied vital family history, pictures, newspaper cuttings, and leads to productive sources of information. Richard Bryden provided personal information, photographs, illustrative material from The Grumbler (KCI's yearbook), and the Pan Politae memoirs of Harry J. Haus and Fred Snyder. Besides furnishing photographs, Muriel Schadek prepared a moving and informative memoir of her fiancé, John (Bud) Heimrich.

SOURCES: G. Elmore Reaman, The Trail of the Black Walnut (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1957), chaps. II and III; E. Reginald Good, “Colonizing a People: “Mennonite Settlement in Waterloo Township”, Earth, Air, Fire and Water: Studies in Canadian Ethnohistory , ed. David T. McNab (Waterloo ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1998), 145-80, a revisionist statement; Werner Bausenhart, German Immigration and Assimilation in Ontario, 1783-1918 (New York and Ottawa: Legas, 1989), 95, and chap. 6; W.R. Chadwick, The Battle for Berlin, Ontario: An Historical Drama (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1992).

National Archives of Canada: Service Record of Leading Aircraftsman/Temporary Sergeant John Gilchrist Heimrich (contains RCAF Training Report (Pilot), Flying Times, Accident Report, and Death Certificate); Spencer Dunmore, Wings for Victory: The Remarkable Story of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan in Canada (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1994), 36-8, 84, 142, 210, 265, 350, 351; Jean Martin, “The Great Canadian Air Battle: The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan and RCAF Fatalities during the Second World War”, Canadian Military Journal (Spring 2002), 67 passim; Les Allison and Harry Hayward, They Shall Grow Not Old: A Book of Remembrance (Brandon MB: Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum Inc., 1996, 2 nd printing), 314; Kitchener-Waterloo Record , 23 September 1943, 26 September 1973.

Kitchener Public Library / Special Collections: The Grumbler, 1936-1941. As noted, the yearbook contains few references to John G. Heimrich apart from the Tweedsmuir picture (frontispiece, 1940 ); Canadian Baptist Archives / McMaster Divinity College: McMaster University Student File 7793, John G. Heimrich (contains admissions application, letter to Elven Bengough, 16 Aug. 1942), Biographical File, John G. Heimrich; McMaster University Library / W. Ready Archives, Special Collections: Marmor 1942 , 43, 65, 76, 102, Silhouette, 3 Oct. 1941, 4, 24 Oct. 1941,3, 31 Oct. 1941; Charles M. Johnston, McMaster University , II: The Early Years in Hamilton, 1930-1957 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 94, 100-1.