With Canada Day two weeks after Father’s Day, it’s a time for grateful reflection; for me, that includes my family’s arrival in Vancouver in late June, 65 years ago.
We came by ocean liner, the MV Georgic, from England to Halifax, and then crossed our new country by train. In the battered photo, we’re stepping into the future on the deck of the Georgic — the children in order from two to 17 years of age and then our parents. I’m second youngest.
During the voyage, my father gave the keynote speech at a banquet. He told the story of the ship.
I listened, and learned the Georgic was a motor vessel, not a steamship. It began life as a passenger liner in 1932 but became a troop ship in World War II. In 1941, German aircraft bombed it at anchor, south of the Suez Canal. Ammunition stores exploded, and it burned and sank — a total loss.
Incredibly, it was refloated a few months later and towed 1,500 miles to “British India,” where my future father, an engineer, was chief executive of the Karachi Electric Supply Company. To help the war effort, his electricians restored the motors and everything else electrical (March–December 1942).
After structural work in Bombay (now Mumbai), the Georgic was a troop ship again. After the war, it was refitted as a passenger liner once more, enabling our Atlantic voyage in 1952.
The story ended like this: “And that was how the Georgic came to be known as ‘the ship that lived again.’”
Later, the Georgic’s final voyage brought British troops home from Hong Kong in 1955. It had served longer after death than before it.
My father retired young for health reasons, in 1959. Encouraged by George Norris, sculptor and friend, he took up sculpting. He’d gather driftwood from the sea, notice latent form, and carve exquisite sculptures from it. In essence, they’re like the sunken shipwreck with value after all.
Dad died in 1976. Just four of us in the photo are alive for Canada’s 150th birthday, and we all live the Georgic spirit in our own ways. Through my conservation efforts, you may have shared in it.
Jim Wright is a long-time Richmond activist.
