Back to the beginning of my story and why I would thank my relationship with HMCS Bonaventure for my appearance on the Canadian War Museum site. Unification of the three Canadian services was inevitably undenruay and unhappily for many of us, our new uniform would not reflect the centuries of naval history that we inherited. I always had felt particularly proud of our tradition and knowing what the three stripes on our middies represented, as well as why sailors sported bell-bottom trousers. We would be donning ‘green’ uniforms henceforth. I would be sent to Ottawa, along with representatives from other services, to model for media release purposes, the new Womens’ uniform. After sitting atop tanks, gazing skyward at imaginary aircraft at the War Museum, I would be ultimately cast smiling into the distance as I sit behind a typewriter with a decidedly Princess Anne hairstyle, boasting a pleated mint green blouse which held as much history as a stick of celery.
ln 1969, Canada phased a reduction in Canada’s NATO commitments, a harbinger of the end of Naval Air on Carriers and a swing to a cheaper operation of helicopters and destroyers. By 1970, Bonnie had covered 374,597 nautical miles – some of which in hurricane conditions. Via CBC Radio, word reached The Bonnie, while on a NATO exercise in mid-Atlantic in September of 1969, she was to be scrapped and her Tracker squad to be disbanded. She was decommissioned at Halifax, July 3, 1970 and purportedly sold for scrap to Taiwan the following year. A crazy rumor circulated for a while that HMCS Bonaventure had not actually been sold for scrap but made her way to some foreign country to serve out a few more years: Not For Us AIone. I secretly hoped that it was true.
