Zavitz, Jack

Jack Zavitz was born June 18, 1924 in Windsor, Ontario.  He grew up against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the early part of the war, and when he finished high school he found himself in the RCAF, where he was pegged as a mechanic and trained for ground crew duty.  Jack spent time in the technical training schools of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, seeing quite a bit of Canada along the way.  He ended up specializing in radios, and worked on some of the newer aircraft in the late stages of the war, including the DeHavilland Mosquito.  Jack’s service ended up taking place in eastern Canada, when he was assigned to bases in Nova Scotia that took part in the Battle of the Atlantic.  After the war, he went to school at McGill to study electrical engineering, which led him into work that took him around the world.  Like so many veterans, he married and raised his family, finding his place in the new rhythms of postwar Canadian life.  We met Jack via zoom in March 2021, and we were able to meet him in his room at the Sunnybrook Veterans’ Wing.