Remembering our roots – Ron & Joanna Howard

Times Contributor

 

Ron’s family started life in London, England but moved to Quebec City in 1818, arriving just after the War of 1812. After a number of years they moved first to Montreal, then to the Ottawa Valley, where free land and land grants were available. This land was very productive, and good for growing crops including vegetables and feed for cattle. Family history shows that five or six families made the move from Montreal. The family name of the time was ‘Servige,’ with the mother coming from the family name of ‘Kitchen.’ 

By the early 1900’s, marriage between these immigrants enabled the surname ‘Howard’ to come into being. Ron was born in 1944, in Toronto, but attended school while living on a farm about 60 miles east of the Toronto. He moved back to Scarborough in 1957. He joined the Air Cadets in 1958, then the Canadian Army at Camp Borden in 1963. This is where he took his basic training and trades training. Extensive coverage of Ron’s military career appeared in the Strathmore Times published on Nov. 9, 2012.

While serving at Iserlohn, West Germany in 1965, he met his wife to be, Joanna, and they were married in Scarborough, Ontario in 1967. This wedding produced a son and a daughter, who in turn have provided three grandchildren.

Joanna was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, which is in Southern England in 1942, and following her adoption at age five, she moved to Leicester, where she grew up. After leaving school, she spent 13 months being trained at Dr. Barnado’s, as a house mother. She moved to West Germany in 1963, and became a nanny for the Brigade Major, British Coldstream Guards, for the next four years. During this time, she met Ron, and as indicated above, they were married in 1967.

In 1970, they moved to Calgary, where Ron worked as a storeman for the Calgary Board of Education, for the next 27 years. Meantime, Joanna worked in the hospitality industry for 23 years, in major downtown Calgary hotels, like the Westin.

To this day, Ron is still very involved in all kinds of military activities – with both the Air Cadets here in Strathmore, the Army Cadet League of Canada, and serves as the secretary/treasurer of The Lord Strathcona’s Horse (Royal Canadians). He says that being retired doesn’t seem to have made his work load any lighter!

Since moving here, he has noticed how much the town has grown, and to keep up with new infrastructure,  property taxes have greatly increased. The new mall on the east side of town, and housing developments all around are good for Strathmore.

For interest sake – Ron told me of a family of four relatives who made the ill-fated voyage on the Titanic. Three went down with the ship – the father Hudson Allison, his wife Beth, and their daughter Lorraine (age 3). But, their son Trevor who was still a baby survived, because he was placed in a lifeboat with his nurse. He lived until age 17 (1929) before dying of ptomaine poisoning. He’s buried beside his father at Chesterville, Ontario.