Not Lost at Sea: The Ajax Club of Halifax
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25071/2561-5467.1312Keywords:
Royal Canadian Navy, Royal Navy, ship badges, Battle of the Atlantic, 1939-1945, World War, 1939-1945, Halifax, Nova Scotia, community-navy relations, Janet Evelyn McEuen, 1891-1987, McGill University ArchivesAbstract
Halifax was known as the least favourite wartime Atlantic port for sailors and roundly received criticism for the treatment of sailors ashore. The fate of the Ajax Club became a much-cited example of that belief. In May 1945 that displeasure would infamously come to a head in the V-E Day riots. The Ajax Club story and the naval badges received from ships’ crews and naval authorities are a reminder of the uncertainty of public memory. The efforts and legacy of a civilian woman was a local story that played an unexpectedly larger role in wartime Canada and in subsequent years.
References
Caldwell, Robert C. The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord 10, no. 1 (January 2000): 3-20. https://doi.org/10.25071/2561-5467.607
Dimblebey, Jonathan. Battle of the Atlantic. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Kimber, Stephen. Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2002.
White, James F.E. “The Ajax affair: citizens and sailors in wartime Halifax, 1939-45.” MA thesis, Dalhousie University, 1984, revised 2020.
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