Lest We Forget

Click here to view Charles Conroy’s WWII personnel files at the LAC

Charles Ewart Conroy. Service RCAF WWII. Unit 45 Group (RAF). Ferry Command. Base Trinidad.

Rank Leading Aircraftman. Position radar mechanic. Service Number: R151354.

Charles Ewart Conroy, my Dad, was born February 8, 1913, in Stratford, Perth County, Ontario, to parents Charles John Conroy, originally from Bristol, England, and Flossie Irene Kinsman of Stratford. He was the oldest of eight children, with brothers Henry Clayton (Harry), Stanley Gordon, and Terrence John Conroy, and sisters Kathleen Flossie (Armstrong) Conroy, Eileen Madaline (Sobie) Conroy, Mary Edna (Tuijten later spelled Tuyten) Conroy, and Dorothy Isobel (Bradshaw) Conroy (twin of Stanley Gordon). Harry was also in the service (Army A 49616, Field Unit, Essex Scottish). Stan was in the RCAF, LAC 259975, stationed in Souris, Manitoba. Both came home. Terry was too young to serve.

Charlie, known as Chas, to some, was born at 569 Brunswick Street and grew up at 263 Douglas Street and 35 Avon Street. He attended Avon Public School in Stratford and then Stratford Collegiate Institute for First Form, grade 9. That was 1926. He then left school to help support the family, and studied on his own, writing his final exams each year in June. In Fifth Form, he returned to school full time (1932-1933) for his Senior Matriculation. During this time, Charlie worked with the Bell Telephone Company as a linesman during 1928 and 1929 and then worked nights at the TVB Bread Company as a baker’s helper to help support his family during his high school years. After Senior Matriculation, Fifth Form, later known as Grade 13, Charlie then attended the Stratford Normal School to become an elementary school teacher (1933–1934), graduating in 1934 with First Class Honours.

There were no teaching jobs so Charlie worked at the Stratford Paper Box Factory, owned and operated by T. G. Whiteside, his future father-in-law. When a teaching job became available, he took it and taught for a year at a rural school just outside Stratford and then for a year in St. Catharines. (1936-1938). None of the jobs including teaching paid well, and in order to save enough to marry his Stratford sweetheart, Audrey Whiteside, he headed north to work in Kirkland Lake, where he worked for considerably more money than in Stratford, at R. A Trussler’s General Store from 1938 to 1942. He returned to Stratford to marry Audrey Whiteside in 1940 and then they lived in Kirkland Lake. They were living at their second small, rented house at 6 Taylor Avenue when Charlie enlisted in the RCAF on April 28, 1942 in North Bay.

Charlie’s marriage took place at the Congregational Church in his home town of Stratford on Tuesday September 17, 1940. His bride was Audrey Elizabeth Whiteside, also of Stratford (1916—2000). Audrey was a music teacher and organist who later worked for the Stratford Festival and Perth Mutual Insurance Company.

After their marriage in 1940, Audrey and Charlie moved to Kirkland Lake to live. Charlie had already moved north on his own two years earlier to secure a better paying job than teaching.

Charlie signed his attestation papers on April 28, 1942, in North Bay, Ontario, enlisting as a Leading Aircraftman (LAC) in the Royal Canadian Air Force. About a month after enlisting, on July 27, LAC Conroy was transferred from the North Bay Reception Centre to No.5 Manning Depot in Lachine, Quebec, for induction and basic training. A day later, he was transferred to No.1 Manning Depot in Toronto, Ontario. On August 28, 1942, he completed a course in Radio Direction Finding/Radar Mechanic with Signals Training Detachment.

During this same summer, Charlie and Audrey moved back to Stratford so that she would be close to family. Audrey was expecting her first…and only child.

On November 8, 1942, LAC Conroy left the No.1 Manning Depot to take on strength at the No.15 RCAF Detachment Radio Mechanics School at the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph, where he acquired more theoretical training in electronics, radio, and radar. He remained there for four months, completing his Radio Direction Finding Class B course on March 13, 1943, the next day he transferred back to No.1 Manning Depot Toronto.

It was during this time, on March 3, 1943, that his only son, Charles Gordon (Gord) Conroy, was born at the Stratford General Hospital. Charlie was not able to be there for his birth but did manage a short visit to be with mother Audrey and baby Gordon before the end of March 1943.

On April 1, 1943, LAC Conroy was again transferred, this time to No.31 Radio Direction Finding School (RDFS) in Clinton, Ontario, where he learned more on radar technology. On July 8, 1943, he completed his Radio Direction Finder Mechanic (Ground) Class B course, and on July 12, he returned to No.5 Manning Depot in Lachine.

During July 1943 he had some time in Stratford with his family, wife Audrey and son Gordon, at the home of his in-laws, Leila and George Whiteside, 54 Waterloo Street North.

On August 4, 1943, LAC Conroy was transferred to the RAF Delegate in Washington, D.C., and the next day he was attached to flight training centre in Corpus Christi, Texas. He was there until September 21, when he was transferred back to No.5 (previously No.31) RDFS in Clinton.

During this brief September time in Clinton, not far from Stratford, Charlie was able to visit his family and spend time with his wife and son. It was his final visit.

Charlie remained in Clinton for just under a month, before being transferred back to No.5 Manning Depot Lachine on October 19, 1943. Three days later, he was sent to the RAF Delegation in Washington, D.C.

On October 26, he arrived at Nassau, Bahamas, and was stationed to the No.111 (Coastal) Operational Training Unit, which trained aircrews on anti-submarine patrols and bomber conversions for aircraft. He was stationed as Med Air Command.

On November 6, 1943, LAC Conroy was struck off strength of No.11 OUT and the next day was on route to Trinidad, with plans to go to Belem in Brazil and then across the southern Atlantic via South Africa to the Mediterranean Theatre.

On November 7, after leaving Trinidad, on the way to Brazil, the plane he was in did not arrive at its destination. They were travelling under radio silence and disappeared either over ocean or jungle. All aboard were lost. No traces of plane or crew and passengers have ever been found. “Ventura PV-1 FP-647 was lost on a ferry flight out of Trinidad, destined for Belem Brazil, cause unknown.”

As happened in so many families, life was changed for many with this death. We remember with love and gratitude.

Leading Aircraftman Charles Ewart Conroy’s sacrifice is honoured on the War Memorial in Stratford.

Charles Ewart Conroy is also honoured on the Air Force Memorial in Ottawa.

Information on Charles Ewart Conroy of Ferry Command RCAF is also housed at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Mount Hope outside Hamilton Ontario.

– by Gord Conroy

A Brief Story memory compiled by Charles Gordon Conroy, son of Charles Ewart Conroy.

I knew Dad only through stories and memories from friends and family. Mom had lots of them but so did Dad’s brothers and sisters and other friends. We have a few family photos of Mom, Dad and me taken during the first six months of my life in the summer of 1943 when Dad had brief home visits to Stratford from RCAF training.

We are together in the photos…but I wish I had known him…as a boy and as a man.

My Mom called him Chas. As a boy, I made his favourite brown sugar and egg white icing for cakes whenever we celebrated. I played tennis with his racket, a wooden Slazenger, and heard how he made a little pocket money re-stringing rackets for others using a pair of awls. I played on the same court where Mom and Dad played in the early mornings after he finished his night shift a generation earlier. I learned to play checkers with my Grampa on my Dad’s RCAF travelling checkers pocket set. I sometimes heard a story of Dad while we had a game together.

My Aunt Mary, Dad’s younger sister, called Charlie, their family’s “shining star.” A good friend of Dad, Ernie Bailey, passed on these words to me when I was a teenager. “Your Dad was the best man I ever met.”

My Mom told me that she and Dad knew that they were to be together from the moment they met. They were “an Item,” for nine years during The Great Depression till they could afford to be married in 1940. And during that time, when there was little money, they enjoyed singsongs with Mom playing at home with friends and often walked around the river, even in the rain, enjoying the beauty of Stratford and the world.

Our family is grateful for this Memorial project. I have passed on some stories to my children and grandchildren about Dad. We all know of him and others through our stories.

It is important to remember people like Charlie Conroy and give thanks. I am grateful every day.

May we always remember.

Gord

Canada, V. A. (2025a, May 26). Stratford War Memorial. Stratford War Memorial | Veterans Affairs Canada. https://www.veterans.gc.ca/en/remembrance/memorials/canada/stratford-war-memorial

Canada, V. A. (2025b, December 2). Leading Aircraftman Charles Ewart Conroy. Charles Ewart Conroy | Veterans Affairs Canada. https://www.veterans.gc.ca/en/remembrance/memorials/canadian-virtual-war-memorial/652865