Winer, Lorne

Lorne Winer was born November 7, 1917; he passed away in May 2023, at the age of 105. Lorne first visited Crestwood in February 2012, at the age of 95. He sat down with Canadian History 10 students Maxime Bernier and Nathan George, and told them about his life both before and after the war. Lorne grew up in Toronto, where he remembered life in the downtown slum known as the Ward, where Lorne came of age during the depths of the Great Depression. Growing up in a Jewish neighbourhood Lorne experienced the antisemitism that was prevalent in interwar Toronto, and he was aware of the realities in Europe – his parents had fled the pogroms a generation before. Lorne therefore enlisted shortly after the war broke out; after training and an overseas journey that he characterized as utterly miserable, he ended up in England in 1940, and he was one of those Canadian soldiers who would spend five years overseas – “five lost years” as he would later characterize them. While other Canadian soldiers were deployed to the Italian campaign, Lorne bided his time and trained, preparing for the D-Day landings. Once the Second Survey Regiment crossed the Channel, Lorne fought his way through Normandy, and into Belgium and the Netherlands, where he had fond memories of the Dutch people. In May 2015, Lorne was featured in a Toronto Star article on the Oral History Project Breakfast – https://www.thestar.com/…/history-lessons-from…. In January 2020 Mr. Masters took Jievan Tapajna and Liam Wagner to visit Lorne at his home, and that interview – with the then 102-year-old Lorne – is featured here, and it is well worth a listen. Lorne continued to visit Crestwood for Remembrance Day, right up until November 2022, and he met with students where he could, always bringing personal insights and stories.