Garrity, Jean

Jean Garrity was born January 27, 1923 in Jamestown, Newfoundland. Her father was a bookkeeper for a logging company and her mother was a teacher who ran the post office out of the family home in that small fishing village.  Jean grew up alongside her six siblings during the Great Depression, which she remembers were difficult times in her small community.  When the war started Jean was 16 years old, and she and a friend took work at the Twillingate Hospital in those years.  When a recruiting officer came to Newfoundland she and a friend decided to join the RCAF Women’ s Division (WD).  They were sent to Rockcliffe, Ontario for their basic training in 1943, and from there Jean ended up in St. Hubert, Quebec, where she was a nurse’s assistant at the base hospital.  The base was part of the north Atlantic ferry route, so all types of aircraft came through on their way to European battlefields, and Jean was able to hitch the occasional ride. She met her husband at St. Hubert as well:  he had been a POW in Germany for three years during the war, shot down on a Bomber Command mission.  His transition to civilian life had its ups-and-downs, and Jean was there to help him through it. The two of them married in 1946; they took advantage of their veterans’ benefits to resume their education, and together they raised their family and found their place in postwar Canada.  Jean Garrity was interviewed by Zach Dunn (Global Veterans’ Stories) and Scott Masters at her home in London, Ontario in February 2026.