15C cloudy.
Visited with my cousin in am, MacLean trophy in pm (had a good game).

Author’s comments

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he preceding chapters are what I have imagined might have happened and how the Pearce family may have escaped from China.  John and Jean both remembered the doors of the hospital being blown in and the impression it has left on me all these years is as vivid as if I had been there.

  How they actually got back to England I was either never told or have long forgotten. But logically, because of their non military status and the size of the family, it should be assumed that they found their way back by at least two or three ships. But they did find their way back and were promptly sent out on another mission but this time to the “wilds” of Canada, Province of British Columbia.

  I first met the family in 1942 in the very tiny community of Garden Bay a sub community of the Pender Harbour area which is situated on the lower British Columbia coast. In those days it wasn’t considered wild by most of us but due to its relative remoteness was considered by city dwellers as being on the edge of civilization.

  My family and I had just moved to Garden Bay and the Pearce’s and I were the only children of our age for a few miles around. (John, Jean and I were all born on exactly the same day).

  Doctor Pearce was now the resident doctor of St. Mary’s Hospital and the Pastor for the church on the same property. Mrs. Pearce was once again nursing and taught Sunday school. The hospital and church were both run by the Columbia Coast Mission, a unique branch of the Anglican Church.