The little girl who died in the big war
Plaque honouring one of first Canadian victims of Second World War finds a home in Burlington
SEVENTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO today, more than 1,000 people jammed the area around the Canadian National Railway Station to catch a glimpse of a small casket carrying the remains of a 10-year-old girl.
Margaret Hayworth was among the first Canadian fatalities of the Second World War and Hamilton was reeling in grief over her death. She was knocked unconscious by flying debris when the passenger ship Athenia was torpedoed and sunk in the North Atlantic on Sept. 3, 1939. She died six days later. Her body was transported by ship to Halifax and then by train to the station on James Street North.
After a packed public service at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Hamilton the next day that saw hundreds of mourners lining the streets,
a bronze plaque was prominently displayed at the church to remember the young girl whose death led to “the first funeral in Canada of the 2nd Great War.” But the plaque went missing after St. Andrew’s closed in the early 1980s.
That was until this summer when it resurfaced in a basement at a Presbyterian Church facility in Toronto. And on Sept. 25 it will be rededicated at Knox Presbyterian on Elizabeth Street in Burlington in a ceremony for parishioners.
Margaret’s sister, Jacqueline Hayworth Bullock, 82, of Burlington, says she is elated that the memorial has been recovered.
“It shouldn’t have been sitting in a basement where no one could see it,” said Bullock, who was also on the Athenia with her mom when it was torpedoed. Neither was injured. “It should be hanging somewhere. Since my father was an elder at Knox Presbyterian in Burlington and my sister went to Sunday school there, it was a logical place for it.”
The plaque was recovered due to the efforts of Knox parishioner and local history book publisher Gary Evans. He came to know of the plaque from a 2005 book he published called “Hamilton at War” by Margaret Houghton that “made mention of the plaque, and said it was hanging in the Presbyterian Church archives in Toronto.”
Evans felt the plaque should be moved to Knox because of the family’s connection to the church. So he set out to find it.
“I contacted the museum, and the national Presbyterian Church archives, but no one knew of its existence,” he said. He also contacted Bullock who told him the family had also tried to recover the plaque from the archives without success.
But Evans persisted, and over the years convinced officials with the church to take a harder look. Then finally in June the artifact was located. Evans contacted the family about the discovery and drove to Toronto where it was handed over to him in a very dirty state. He cleaned it up for the official unveiling next week.
Bullock said she still vividly remembers the torpedo attack all those years ago even though she was only five years old and had no idea about the world tumbling into war at the time. The family had spent the summer in Scotland, visiting relatives. Father John had already returned to Canada on another ship and on Sept. 1 mother Georgina with her two daughters set out for home on the Athenia.
Two days into the voyage, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany and it was on that evening that the German submarine struck in the North Atlantic, more than 320 kilometres west of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.
“It was after dinner, around 7 o’clock and it was just starting to get dark and kids were playing on deck and the mothers were sitting on the chairs and all of a sudden there was a thud, an explosion. The boat shook and tilted and everybody started running around and yelling for life-jackets.
Jacqueline got separated from her mother and sister and was scooped onto a different life boat that in turn met up with a rescue ship. She ended up in Scotland, staying with relatives and did not meet up with her parents in Canada until a couple of months later. She said it was many months after that she finally learned her sister had died.
“Nobody told me about my sister. I guess they thought I was too young to understand … My mother would never talk about it. I guess she felt it was because she wanted to stay longer in Scotland that we ended up on the Athenia.”
As an adult, she learned details from her father as well as from newspaper stories and books that she collected.
Looking back on it now, she feels, the massive public funeral in Hamilton “was political. My family didn’t want a big funeral. They just wanted family and friends. It was pushed on them. War had started and all these bigwigs came and they filled the papers with the story about my sister.
“I can’t understand why they singled out a child to try to pump up the world.”