By Dave Flaherty/Active Senior’s Digest
What would seem to the unassuming eye as an everyday lunch gathering was actually the continuation of friendships spanning back six-and-a-half decades.
A dozen women from across Canada met at the Oshawa Golf and Curling Club on Saturday, June 2, 65 years to the day they attended the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
They are part of a group of 50 girls selected from across Canada.
The girls were taken to England courtesy of Garfield Weston, a prominent Canadian businessman, as part of an effort to create closer ties between Canada and Great Britain.
“We have to thank him, he wanted to promote friendship,” says Jean Bailey, an Oshawa resident and hostess of the event, and one of the girls in the group.
As a Port Perry high school student, she remembers being told by a teacher at her school during a basketball game the list of names had been released.
The seven-week tour included visits to Canadian war cemeteries, Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Eiffel Tower in France.
During Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, the girls joined Mr. Weston on Oxford Street in London, all dressed in the colour of navy blue.
Joining them were 50 girls from across Great Britain, dressed in red.
Bailey recalls that some of the sites they visited still had visible effects from the Second World War, which ended only eight years earlier.
“In Dieppe (France), you see people standing in the holes in the buildings,” she says.
Bailey, who noted that before the trip she had never been in a taxi, says it was a “life-changing experience” for all of those involved.
“We were at the age where we left as girls and you came home as an adult,” she says.
However, after returning home, the girls began their careers and families, and the connection faded somewhat.
But with the rise of the Internet and social media, members of the group, who are now in their early 80s, began rediscovering their friends from the past
Bailey says some have passed away or are unable to travel due to health issues, but they have had about 10 reunions since 2003, she estimated.
The group that gathered in Oshawa included women from Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick and Quebec.
