Joyner, Mac

Mac Joyner was on May 24th, 1923 in Hamilton, Ontario. As a small child, he and his family moved all around North America, mainly in the southern United States, including California, Florida and Georgia. With all the moving, school life was quite difficult for Mac. After settling back into Canada, Mac grew up living the average life of a boy in Hamilton, taking part in the town sports like baseball and basketball. Before the war, Mac recalls the introduction of radio, with some of his favourite programs being Amos ‘n’ Andy and Fibber McGee and Molly. As a teenager, Mac took a special interest in aircraft. He was a part of a aircraft model crew, and visited one of Hamilton’s small airports frequently.

As the war broke out, Mac was sure his family would support his enlisting as his father was already a Canadian war artist and was overseas a year before Mac. Mac eventually enlisted at the age of 18, along with his high school friends and others in the area. Mac went on to train at Manning Depot and graduated from #5 AOS in Winnipeg. He travelled overseas on a troop ship, during which he was in charge of a 20mm Oerlikon anti-aircraft cannon. When arriving in Liverpool, Mac got his first real war experience as there was a German air raid taking place at the same time. By the end of Mac’s tours in the war, he had taken part in a total of 33 major operations. He was a navigator bombardier in a Lancaster bomber.

Mac Joyner was interviewed in his room at Sunnybrook in January 2015 by Matti MacLachlan, Bowen Ouyang, and Viki Tao.  In 2016 he was again interviewed, this time by Aidan Reilly, Mert Tutcu, Aaron Joshua and David Huang.