My grandmother, Joan Madden, is an 82-year-old woman who lived through the Second World War. Her father was a widower so her grandmother took care of her and her siblings. For a long time she would call her grandmother Mom. It took her awhile to change that.

When the war started, my grandmother noticed many different things happening. Men, many of whom she had known since her childhood, were being drafted and then vanishing overseas.

“They would just disappear,” she says.

The newspaper was something everyone was desperate for. People were worried about their family members in the war.

The newspaper had a bulletin insert for breaking news, and boys would walk the streets yelling, ‘Hi! Hi! Extra!’ alerting many of the weary families. An “extra” was something other than the regular news. It was specifically about the war and documented the latest developments, as well as listed who had died recently.

“ Every time a plane would fly over, she became frightened. She even asked her grandmother, ‘Are they going to bomb us, Mom? Are they going to bomb us?’

Food was scarce, and coupons were handed out for everyone. People would get so excited for peanut butter that when there was peanut butter on the shelf of a grocery store, everyone would know and would go to that place right away. The luxury of having certain foods during that time was amazing. Everything was worth so much.

My grandmother was afraid that Canada might be bombed. Every time a plane would fly over, she became frightened. She even asked her grandmother, “Are they going to bomb us, Mom? Are they going to bomb us?”

One thing that made my grandmother different was that her father did not go to war. He was a widower and so he was allowed to stay in Winnipeg with his family. Not much changed in my grandmother’s life. Her grandmother still took care of the family and her father still worked.

My grandmother kept a scrapbook of all the men that had died or gone missing because she wanted to make sure that someone remembered them. Little did she know that her future husband’s brother was in that scrapbook.

When the war was over, people would go to movie theatres and see footage of the war. It took everyone by surprise when they played the video of the concentration camps, because they did not know that concentration camps even existed.

When they found this out, most realized then that the evil in Germany was a lot worse than they previously thought.

Today, my grandmother still fears sometimes that war could break out in Winnipeg. But greater than the fear is the gratefulness she feels for her large family.

Denae Madden is a Grade 11 student at Nelson McIntyre Collegiate. This article was written for The Uniter as part of her course work.