Life as evacuee was 'big adventure' for Glasgow teenager sent to Canada with 'three days' notice'

But Lavinia McKellar was ready for the adventure.

The teenager was one of thousands evacuated by the Children’s Overseas Reception Board (the ‘CORBy’ ) during the Second World War. (It came to an abrupt end when the evacuation ship SS City of Benares, carrying 90 children bound for homes in Canada, was torpedoed and sunk. Many people, including 77 of the 90 CORB children, died in the tragedy.)

Our recent feature on Times Past reader Dan Harris’s experiences of being evacuated to Canada prompted Lavinia’s daughter Susan to get in touch with her mother’s story.

“My mum’s parents, Donald and Lavinia McKellar, lived most of their lives in Maryhill and Ruchill,” she says. “My grandfather, was a factor for the Glasgow Corporation, collecting rents from tenement flats and when my parents were first married they lived in Allison Street in Govanhill. After I was born they moved to Simshill, then to Mount Florida.”

Lavinia’s early life was spent in the US – her mother had emigrated to Canada and met her husband in New York, where Lavinia and her sister, Cissie, were born. The family was advised to move to a more temperate climate because Cissie had health problems, having been born with a hole in her heart. In 1932, the family moved to Glasgow.

Like Dan, Lavinia was on board the SS Duchess of York that left Gourock in 1940, part of a convoy of merchant ships, submarines and destroyers sailing out of the Clyde.

“She was keen to go, it was a big adventure for her,” says Susan. “After a year with her first host family, Reverend and Mrs Farquharson, she stayed with Mr and Mrs Lorenz until 1945, attending Hanover High School, which she loved.”

After returning to Glasgow, Lavinia completed a secretarial course at the city’s College of Commerce. She met Tommy Stevenson in 1948, and they married four years later. Their son Laurence was born in 1953 and Susan followed in 1955. However, Lavinia’s Canada story was not over.

In 1970, the family emigrated to Toronto. Sadly, Lavinia died last year, at the age of 94 - just eight weeks after her husband.

“She had many fond memories of being a ‘war guest’, the Canadian description of an evacuee,” says Susan, who now lives in London, and is compiling a book of memories and photos all about her mother’s fascinating story.

READ MORE: Dan's moving memories of life as a war evacuee in Canada

“She was one of the older evacuees, being 13 at the time of departure from Scotland. She loved being a ‘farmerette’ picking fruit in the Niagara Peninsula during school holidays supporting the war effort.

While in Hanover, Ontario, Lavinia took part in a government promotion encouraging people to use less rubber as part of the war effort. She was interviewed by the local newspaper, and told them she was “impressed by the blue Canadian sky, the bright leaves of the autumn maples and the spacious green lawns in sharp contrast to the grey buildings and skies of Glasgow.”

She also took great delight “in confusing her classmates with her Scottish brogue.....”

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