A Schoolgirl in Wartime Gander
as told by Eileen Elms age 94 (with [Diane Vey-Morawski] for Downhome Magazine)

When I started school in Gander, the war was on and the world felt much smaller. It was 1940, and I was just six years old. My first classroom was a single room that held everyone from Grade One right up to Grade Eight. Fourteen of us in all — Newfoundlanders, Canadians, and even a few French children from Quebec who didn’t speak a word of English when they arrived. One teacher tried her best to teach us all, though it couldn’t have been easy.
My mother worried we children wouldn’t get much of an education with just one teacher juggling so many grades, so my brother went to Harbour Grace to live with our aunts and finish school there. Later, my sister Joan went to Nova Scotia for a time and then to Spencer Boarding School in St. John’s. I always thought I’d follow in their footsteps, but by the time I reached the upper grades, school in Gander had changed — the war had ended, new teachers had come, and things finally began to feel more settled.
During the war, though, Gander was like no other place in Newfoundland. It was a military base, and we civilians lived under strict rules. If relatives wanted to visit, my parents had to go to the guardhouse for a pass just so they could step off the train. No one could simply buy a ticket to Gander. If the train slowed down and someone jumped off without clearance, the guards would send them straight back.
And cameras — well, they were forbidden. The military confiscated every one when the war started. Ours was just a little box camera, nothing fancy, but Mom was determined to save it. When a relative visited from Harbour Grace, she quietly slipped the camera into their suitcase and sent it home before the Air Force could take it. Many families never got theirs back — the building where they were stored burned down during the war.
Because of those restrictions, there aren’t many photos of civilian life in Gander during those years. Even school concerts and birthday parties went unrecorded. The few pictures that do exist were taken by official RCAF photographers — like the one from a visit by Lady Baldwin, the Governor’s wife, when we children presented her flowers. I still have that photo, with the names carefully written on the back.
We didn’t have much in the way of playgrounds, but what we did have was imagination. We jumped rope, played simple games, and occasionally got to use the RCAF drill hall or the swimming pool when it wasn’t being used by the military. It was a fine pool — Olympic-sized, in fact — with balconies and changing rooms upstairs. A couple of our teachers would take us there for swimming lessons if they were willing to get wet themselves.
All our teachers were men in those days. The military housed them in the barracks, and I suppose single women wouldn’t have been sent out to a place like Gander during wartime. There weren’t many civilian families then, maybe a few dozen children all told. But after the war ended, people began moving in. The quiet little base town grew and new schools opened in the old military buildings, with female teachers arriving to fill the posts. For the first time, there was a teacher’s hostel to house them — a sign that civilian life was finally taking root.
In summer, we didn’t have far to go for fun. During the war, we swam in Gander Lake, even though the water could be freezing. There was a sturdy wharf built by the RAF — as nice a one as you’d find anywhere in Newfoundland. After the war, Deadman’s Pond became the place to be. The Americans had built a big log cabin there, and the Lush family later ran it as a spot for weddings and gatherings. On summer afternoons, we’d all walk down the path from Edmunds, towels in hand, ready to jump in the warm water.
When the new town of Gander began to take shape in the early 1950s, families started to move from the old site. I was married by then, but I remember the change vividly — grocery stores opening, streets forming, new homes being built. People like Mr. Toitman, a refugee from Europe, started small businesses out of suitcases, going door to door with goods until they could open proper shops. The place hummed with life again after so many years of restriction and war.
Sometimes I think about how different it all was — the security checks, the guards at the gate, the world’s most important air base right in our backyard — and how ordinary it felt to us as children. We grew up alongside history without even knowing it. Gander was our little world: one schoolroom, one teacher, and fourteen children learning their lessons while the war raged far beyond the fences.
Now, at ninety-four, I can still see it all if I close my eyes — the noise of the planes, the laughter in the old drill hall, the sparkle of Gander Lake on a sunny morning. It was a strange, wonderful childhood, tucked inside a wartime town that would one day become a crossroads for the world.
Would you like me to adjust it for a stronger Newfoundland dialect flavor (keeping Eileen’s voice more conversational and local), or keep this current, clean, publication-ready tone for Downhome’s editorial style?

As told to Diane Vey-Morawski by Eileeen Elms