I was immediately time-travelled back to 1943 when I opened the Times Colonist and saw the article about how Cedar Hill School is to be destroyed.

I was a Grade 6 student there, having come from Vancouver when my soldier father was stationed at Gordon Head officer’s training camp (now UVic).

The flat-roofed extension was not there.

The Grade 6 room was on the main floor in the south-west corner. On the area which is now used for parking, Grade 6 boys were trained to extinguish incendiary bombs that might be dropped on Victoria by Japanese planes.

Each team of boys would have a bucket of water, a bucket of sand, a shovel, rake and a stirrup pump. Fortunately we never had to do it for real and no-one ever ­produced a practice bomb.

While the boys did the bomb work, the girls were learning to roll bandages, practice first aid and knit scarves to send overseas.

A couple of times there was an air raid practice warning for the whole city and we kids scrambled, clutching our government-issued gas masks, into the bit of bush that was behind the school and lay face down, with our mouths open to avoid our lungs being burst by explosions until the “all clear” siren sounded.

Such was the real fear of invasion that was instilled in us. So hard to imagine now that such things really happened in quaint little lovely Victoria.

David Smith

Victoria

When one is elected to a local council, one is expected to take a leadership role in their community. And there are times when that leadership role requires you to make decisions because they are the right thing to do, but not necessarily the popular one.

Allowing the marginalized people in our society a warm place to sleep on the rare occasion of........

© Times Colonist