Prairie Sailor
Rodney Pike
Reprinted with permission of the author and publisher of For King and Country: Alberta in the Second World War;)
Finally, in January 1944 I was sent with my crew to stand by and help work up a destroyer escort being built for the RN in the Boston Navy Yard. We sailed her to the UK, and in June 1944 we commissioned a fine new Castle Class Corvette, HMCS Orangeville, in the yard of Henry Robb of Leith.
After a work up by the famous Commodore Stephenson at HMS Western Isles, Tobermory, Scotland, for the rest of the war we were part of the Canadian Close Escort Group, operating out of Londonderry escorting convoys back and forth to and from St. John's, Newfoundland.
Looking back, although it seemed fairly compressed, I did get almost five years of sea time and a lot of training before I was appointed to HMCS Orangeville.
At a layover in St. John's, I was able to visit the home where my father was born in Carbonnear, Newfoundland, and when his sister introduced me to some of the old sea dogs in the community as "Captain Pike," I felt that I had achieved my goal and was being shown the mark of respect that only a real seaman can bestow.