On this day 85 years ago, Andy Smart’s uncle Sgt. George Stevenson crashed his plane in Scotland during a training flight in the Second World War. After a decade of searching, Smart not only found, but repatriated one of the wooden propellors from his uncle’s plane to the church he belonged to in Meaford, Ont. “The plane was completely destroyed by fire with the exception of this propeller blade, which broke off. The propeller blade was taken from someone in the nearby village of Leadhills and put into a pub and hotel down there and hid for four years,” said Smart, who hails from Vanastra. The wooden propellor served as an umbrella rack for years before Smart, who spent 10 years searching, finally tracked his uncle’s lost propellor down at a library in Scotland. He contacted the owners, who agreed to give him the propeller to display at the church his uncle attended every Sunday after moving to Meaford from Scotland in 1928. “When he was killed, it was quite a blow to a lot of Meaford people who knew him, and also to the church, his fellow parishioners,” said Smart. Stevenson was the first pilot from Meaford to join the war effort, and the first to be killed overseas. Bringing a piece of him “home” means the world to parishioners at Christ Church Anglican in Meaford. “While Meaford is a small town, it’s an international town. We have stories that go around the world, be that with the propeller, or be that with our glass here,” said the church’s Minister Father Brendon Bedford. The glass Father Bedford spoke of are four memorial stained glass windows at the church, made up entirely of stained glass fragments recovered from European churches levelled during the Second World War. The church’s minister at the time, Fr. Harold Appleyard, served as a military chaplain from 1942 to 1945. Seeing the destruction of centuries old churches everywhere he went, he was granted permission to sift through the ruins and collect stained glass fragments to create new stained glass windows at his church back in Canada. The four memorial windows made from thousands of shards of stained glass collected from more than 130 European churches were unveiled shortly upon his return from war in 1946. “We have some of the oldest glass, by virtue of where it comes from, some of the oldest glass in North America. Some pieces upwards of 700 to 800 years old,” said Fr. Bedford. A plaque, still with scorch marks from the fires that felled it, made from a destroyed church pew from the Second World War, adorns the church’s wall as well. On it, the names of the six Meaford soldiers killed in the war. Atop that list, Sgt. George Stevenson, who, thanks to his nephew, parishioners at his former church will now have a tangible piece of for centuries to come. “I’m the youngest nephew and I’m getting older. And by the time I’m gone, people in my family will still be able to come here to this church and see the propeller, read the stories, and see the stories about their Great Uncle George, or Great-Great Uncle George. Because of what he did for all of us,” said Smart. A special memorial service unveiling George Stevenson’s propellor, and an 80th anniversary re-dedication of the church’s memorial windows, will take place on Aug. 15 at Christ Church Anglican in Meaford. There will be about 40 members of Sgt. Stevenson’s family present, including his nephew Andy, who spent a decade bringing a small piece of him home to join a growing memorial at his uncle’s former church to Meaford’s war heroes. “They have pictures, they have stories. But now they actually have a piece of what he sacrificed,” said Smart.
