Marjorie Beveridge has a hundred years' worth of memories, many of them now faded.
But she has never forgotten her days as a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force in the Second World War.
Beveridge, who will mark her 100th birthday shortly after Remembrance Day, drove bomb trailers and ambulances in England alongside other women who joined Canada's war effort.
Decades later, the Montreal native says her motivation was simple: "It was war and people were joining up."
Enlisting didn’t seem scary, at least “not when you’re young,” she told CTV Montreal in an interview from a veterans’ hospital where she now resides.
In 1942, married women needed written permission from their husbands to enlist. Beveridge’s husband Howard, who also served in the war as an intelligence officer, gave her his blessing in a letter to the RCAF.
The two of them were separated during the war, but managed to meet up while on temporary leave from their duties. Their outings included going to the theatre in London – a slice of normalcy in a war-ravaged capital.
When they weren’t together, they wrote each other letters.
Beveridge, who was in her late 20s when she joined the war, remembers those years in England as "frugal."
As a leading air woman, she was first posted at a bomber station in Yorkshire, where she drove vehicles and bomb trailers on the air field. She was later assigned to chauffeur the air vice-marshal.
In London, she had a close call when a bomb exploded next to a garage she’d just pulled out of in her ambulance.
Beveridge became so skilled behind the wheel that she continued driving until she was 95 years old, her daughter Joan Beveridge told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview.
Decades ago, Beveridge wrote a detailed account of her air force service. Joan found the handwritten pages and typed them up so they could be shared with family members.
"To all of us in the Armed Forces, an overseas posting was the greatest wish," Beveridge wrote.
Amid the destruction, she managed to focus on the beauty of the English countryside and the cities she visited while on duty.
"In spite of the blackouts and V bombs, London was still a gay and wonderful city," she wrote.
In her notes, Beveridge also recalls a “beautiful black and gold floor length dress” that she brought with her to England.
She knew a glamorous dress would be of little use during the war, but squeezing it into her bag was “well worth the effort,” she wrote. She wore the dress during one of her meetings with Howard in London.
Joan recently found the dress among her mother’s belongings.
After the war, Beveridge ran a nursery school in the Montreal area for 23 years. She didn’t talk much about her time in the RCAF, Joan said.
But Beveridge told CTV that she still thinks about all the Canadian men and their allies who lost their lives overseas.
"Those wonderful young men in their early 20s went out and gave up their lives for us," she said. “Lest we forget.”
Joan said her parents always marked Remembrance Day together while her father was still alive.
"It was pretty important to them to remember that," she said.
This year, Beveridge will spend the day with other veterans and their families at Ste-Anne’s Hospital in Montreal.
She’s also looking forward to her milestone birthday.
"I love a party," she said.
With a report from CTV Montreal’s Denise Roberts
