ISTR reading once about a Canadian veteran who was a “veteran” in the loosest sense of the word. Here’s what happened (as I remember it)…
A young man is drafted into the Canadian army in WWII. He gets on a ship to travel from his provincial little home town to… some other place, where he’ll undergo his physical, etc. During the journey on the ship, something happened (it struck a mine, or came under fire, or something). No one was injured and the ship made it to its destination intact. Once there, the young draftee failed his physical and was disqualified.
However, since he had been in combat during a declared war, according to the letter of Canadian law, he was thus eligible to receive a full military pension during his old age. Even though his time in the service had amounted to a few hours.
Can anyone please point me to a link that straightens out this story? I don’t remember where I first heard it, and Snopes came up blank.
You take your physical before you go to basic training and I’m pretty sure Canadian soldiers were trained in Canada before being shipped over seas…so exactly where in Canada did the young soon-to-be-disqualified soldier come under fire? My WWII history is a bit spotty on the Canadian/North American front.
Having said that…I suppose he could have been from an island off PEI or NL maybe and took a boat to the mainland for his physical and it came under attack by a German U-boat. Ring any bells?
I recall reading about this somewhere as well. As I recall, he had volunteered for the army and travelled from Newfoundland (not then part of Canada) to Nova Scotia for the entry process and was rejected. He later claimed veteran’s benefits as the waters between Neffoundland and Nova Scotia were a designated war zone and it ended up as a court case.
I have been unable to find any reference to this in a search of Supreme Court cases or on the Veterans Affairs site, however. It’s possible my recollection comes from a Reader’s Digest item, so it may not be particularly accurate (leaving aside the question of my poor memory).
(from above site, the Canadian Parliamentary Library, bolding mine.)
Looks like Trainor is wriggling through a perceived loophole in the definition of “war veteran” (which has been closed by the above amendment to legislation). The case has been going back and forth for a while, and the government is likely to appeal it all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. If Trainor was able to apply retroactively for benefits for the last 60 years, it would be a tidy sum.
Needless to say, real war veterans take a pretty dim view of Trainor’s claim.