Notes re my next best seller: “BURY ME AT SEA” 1

The title seems to fit well with my next book, now underway. “Bury Me At Sea” in quotation marks, as if spoken by my father, lines up with “Dad, Well Done”, in quotation marks as well (as if I said the words), and the title of an earlier book concerning father’s Naval memoirs.

While pecking away at the first chapter this morning a book arrived in the mail from California. I.e., H.M.C.S. - One photographer’s impressions of the Royal Canadian Navy in World War II, by Gilbert A. Milne.

Factoids

Gilbert Milne passed away in Toronto in 1991

One of Gilbert’s camera bags survives

My oldest sister presented H.M.C.S to Dad in 1965

The book may be one of the motivating factors that prompted dad to ask to be buried at sea

A quote from the book, read this morning and which I’ll now use to begin the first chapter, is likely very, very true.

The quote:

“Yet I venture to say that so long as memory lasts, the recollection of these great days will be with them, and along with the consciousness of duty done, they will carry in their hearts forever the image of a gallant ship and the spell of the great sea.” Angus L. Macdonald, House of Commons

When dad asked to be buried at sea in the early 1980s (at the age of 60 - 65, my own age at the present time), his voice was filled with passion. He really meant it. I knew it was very important to him but I  never made any plans at that time to help him with his request.

And something my mother said stacked the odds against a burial at sea as well.

[Photos of HMCS by G.Harrison]

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