Kenneth Farley Keys

Kenneth served with the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve during the Second World War. He enlisted in 1944 at Exhibition Grounds in Toronto, ON at 20 years of age. After training at HMCS Cornwallis and on HMCS Stadacona, he served as a Stoker 1st Class aboard the Stadacona the Scotian, and on the Minesweeper HMCS Grandmère on the East Coast and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Kenneth remembered the Halifax explosion of 1945 - Ammunition from ships being retrofitted for service in the Pacific were temporarily stored at the Bedford Magazine on the shores of the Bedford Basin north of Dartmouth. On the evening of July 18, 1945 a fire at the magazine's jetty set off a series of explosions through the night and into the next morning. Kenneth recalled that with the impact of the explosion, the hammocks in dry dock were flung to the steel floor of the ship!

We Will Remember Them