Jack Rhind, 101, is a veteran of the Second World War who lives in Toronto.Photography: Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail • handouts courtesy of Jack Rhind
At 101 but not looking a day over 80 as he moves briskly about his brown-brick Rosedale home sporting a swoop of thick white hair, Jack Rhind draws a straight line from everything that has unfolded in his life back to a “significant, casual decision” he made as a young university student in 1939.
That decision was to follow a friend into the artillery stream of the Canadian Officers’ Training Corps, rather than one of the other army services such as infantry, signal corps or engineers. It was an impromptu choice that would define not only Mr. Rhind’s time on the front lines in the Second World War’s fierce and bloody Italian campaign, but also his eventual rise to the crest of Corporate Canada.
For many residents in this exclusive Toronto neighbourhood of Victorian homes, lush trees and winding streets, Mr. Rhind is a fixture. He grew up in Rosedale only a few blocks from where he now lives, and can be found every day strolling nearby parks.
Mr. Rhind shows his miniature decorations and medals.
Like for so many others over the past two years of the pandemic, such excursions have offered an escape from the confines of home for a centenarian with an abundance of energy still to spare. Mr. Rhind was forced to give up downhill skiing in Collingwood, on the shores of Georgian Bay, when the resort there closed, though he switched to cross-country skiing and plans to hit the trails as soon as the snow is deep enough. His bi-weekly bridge matches also had to be abandoned.
But COVID-19 brought an end to another activity that motivated Mr. Rhind in recent years. Since 2006, and right up until just before the pandemic reached Canada, Mr. Rhind visited dozens of schools and community groups, sharing his stories and the importance of remembrance with schoolchildren through the Memory Project, a program run by Historica Canada, the non-profit best known for its Heritage Minute Canadian history ads.
“A hundred thousand Canadians were killed or injured, families where their father, their son, or their husband didn’t come back, so we shouldn’t just forget all that,” he says in an interview, echoing his message to students. “But it’s not just a case of remembering the sacrifices that happened in World War One or World War Two. A lot of Canadians come from countries threatened by war and there are threats of war all the time around the world. We need to remember how stupid and unnecessary war is.”
Mr. Rhind at a military camp in England, before he joined a field artillery regiment.
In 1942, after graduating with his commerce degree from the University of Toronto, Mr. Rhind was called up as an officer. The following year, he and 93,000 other Canadians were dispatched along with troops from Britain, the United States, France and Poland to Italy, which British prime minister Winston Churchill perceived to be the “soft underbelly” of German-occupied Europe.
It proved to be anything but. In a liberation campaign that lasted nearly two years, the Canadians spent seven harrowing weeks dug in at the foot of Monte Cassino, a rocky hill 150 kilometres southeast of Rome, while an endless barrage of enemy artillery rained down from on high.
As a lieutenant in the 11th Canadian Army Field Regiment, Mr. Rhind commanded four 25-pounder field guns and 35 men.
“They were all these mature guys from different backgrounds and different areas and here was this young officer commanding them, but as we fought we bonded,” he says. “I was so proud of my guys.”
Mr. Rhind's collection of personal photos and letters chronicles his war years.
Mr. Rhind is a meticulous record keeper. To this day, he still has the dog-eared maps he used to calculate the line, range and angle of sight for each volley of artillery. In later years, he wrote an autobiography detailing his extraordinary life for his family – at latest count, three children, six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
But above all, during the war, he kept journals of the action around him and the exploits of his gun crews, admittedly ignoring his commanders’ orders not to keep diaries lest they fall into enemy hands. Mr. Rhind’s own words best capture the casual brutality that marked each day of the war:
April 25th, 1944: Got out to inspect the result of last night’s shelling, Discover that the shell that woke me up had landed three feet behind our command post.
May 11, 1944: Suddenly the silence is shattered by a deafening roar and the sky is lit up by the flashes of hundreds and hundreds of artillery pieces of all sizes. … The pandemonium is indescribable. The valley is lit up like daylight and the air is filled with the swish and whine of shells.
Aug. 24, 1944: I am writing this sitting in our slit trench C.P. [command post] We are all feeling the heat more than any day yet. Sweat dripping off my face though I am sitting perfectly still and am half in the shade. Major Macintosh (our battery commander) killed by shrapnel.
Sept. 28th, 1944: Am woken at 0030 hrs by a peculiar crash and a yelling ‘Someone’s hurt. it’s at #2 gun, sir, man’s leg off.’ Christ, what a night for this to happen. The mud is ankle-deep and the wind is lashing the rain down in a stinging fury. Get to #2 gun and find the boys putting Collins on a stretcher.
Mr. Rhind trains with a firearm.
There were moments he knows his life could have taken a deadly turn. One day when Mr. Rhind was scrambling up the hillside to scout artillery targets, a Polish officer hollered for him to stop before he turned a rocky corner. A German machine gun was hidden there. “If he hadn’t stopped me, I wouldn’t be here today,” he says, before punctuating the story, as he frequently and self-effacingly does, with “Blah, blah, blah, you’ve heard enough crap” or “You don’t want to hear all this.”
Mr. Rhind’s darkest memories though were the stretches when he was alone in his command post at night, lying beside his charts, instruments and communications equipment.
“There were snakes and worms and rats all around you, but worse than that I could hear the shells landing all around me,” he says. “When you’re with a group of men you’re scared, but you’re busy with them and your guns and your calculations. When you were alone, it was just you listening to the whistling noise as the shells came in.”
There were other moments, however, when the war could seem almost surreal. Once the Allies pushed north past Rome, which both sides had agreed not to shell, Mr. Rhind ventured into the capital city while on leave. Visiting the Vatican, he wandered into a small side room only to find Pope Pius XII there. “I was in my uniform and he saw me and I thought he was going to toss me out,” Mr. Rhind says. “Instead he put his hand on my head and blessed me, and that’s why I was so lucky and survived the rest of the war.”
In the year after the success of the Italy campaign, Mr. Rhind was transported north to the Netherlands where he joined with Allied troops helping to liberate towns that had been under Nazi occupation for four years.
At last, in September, 1945, he shipped home to Canada.
At top, Mr. Rhind points himself in a newspaper photo of a march up University Avenue after his return to Toronto. At bottom, family photos chronicle his family and career in business after the war.
Moments after Mr. Rhind was discharged at the corner of University Avenue and Dundas Street, a man emerged from the cheering crowd and approached him. It was Major Davies, the First World War vet who had taught the artillery training program that Mr. Rhind’s “casual decision” had led him into at the start of the war. Major Davies (Mr. Rhind doesn’t recall his first name – he only ever called him “sir”) offered Mr. Rhind a job in the investment department at the life insurance company where he was a top executive.
Over the years, Mr. Rhind climbed the ranks at the company. It was where he met his wife, Elizabeth, better known as Dibs (she passed away in 2003) before he eventually became president of Confederation Life in the late 1970s and early 80s. He also sat on the boards of Ford Motor Co. and Campbell Soup Co., among others.
Mr. Rhind has slowed his pace in recent years, but the pandemic has arguably done more to temper his activities than age. An avid tennis player, he admits he eventually stepped away from the court because he felt his reduced speed wasn’t fair to his doubles partners. Yet friends are quick to point out that after a disappointing match at the age of 99 prompted Mr. Rhind to swear off the sport, he was back the next week getting lessons from the club pro.
In addition to his daily hikes around local parks, Mr. Rhind regularly walks to Summerhill Market for prepared meals. He’s such a fixture there that staff signed an oversized card for his most recent birthday in May.
Mr. Rhind’s return to civilian life was smoother than for many others who returned from battle in Europe traumatized. Still, he found closure 20 years after the war’s end on a trip to Italy with his wife. They rented a car and, following his old maps, drove to Monte Cassino, a place that had once been the scene of so much devastation.
The lush green fields, trees in bloom and well-kept farmhouses he found made him think he’d read the map wrong, until a farmer guided him to one of his old command dugouts. “When we left that place I looked back and said, this is the way God meant it to be. It’s so stupid that we wrecked it all.”
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Jason Kirby