Bertha Curtis

Bertha Curtis
Voluntary Aid Detachment during World War I

Bertha Curtis’ Voluntary Aid Detachment Card p1

p2

Bertha Ogden and her daughter Gloria (age 8)
August 16 1941
English Bay Beach, Vancouver, British Columbia
Photo Courtesy Chris Thompson
This photo astounds me. World War II is on. The Blitz in England is just over.
A family story is Bertha’s elderly father died of a heart attack during an air raid.
Six weeks before, her husband Arthur arrived in Scotland with the Canadian Forestry Corps.
Bertha is living either in a small shack near the northern forest or in nearby Hudson Bay
Junction, Saskatchewan and here they are 1000 miles away from home holidaying
by the ocean. Bertha loved to travel and it seems nothing could stop her!

Bertha and Gloria Ogden
Trafalger Square, London, England
August 1949
Gloria would be age 16, almost 17.

Arthur and Bertha Ogden with daughter Gloria Simmonds and grandson Kim Simmonds
Regina, Saskatchewan 1953

Bertha Ogden's and her daughter Gloria Simmonds Headstone at Veteran's Cemetery, Esquimalt, British Columbia
Courtesy of Robert Briggs