© EyesOnBC 2006-2008

Don & Vicky Lloy
A Strong Sense of Family

by Rita Levitz

“To bring up four children, to keep a family going, meant you had to strive for better pay. You had to be the best you could be, and also be willing to try something new.” So Don Lloy put into words the motivation and shared sense of values that have guided him and his wife Vicky through experiences that could easily fill a few lifetimes.
As with many of the generation that came of age during WWII, their resiliency and resolve was honed by the camaraderie, the deprivations, the sense of duty and the witnessing of unspeakable horrors.

Born in Gladstone, Manitoba, Don enlisted in the Navy in 1942. “Lots of prairie men gravitated to the Navy, the opposite of what we were used to. I didn’t want to go anywhere that I had to do a lot of walking,” he quipped.

It is difficult to incorporate war experiences into what passes for normal life afterwards. “Everything was based around the Legion, as both a service and social organization. We would go every Saturday night when we had five dollars to spend. All the people you knew would be there, and you knew that they understood you. Nobody said anything, but they knew.” It was a strong common bond that went beyond words. Don is also aware of how the music and shows of today, just as in the mid 1940’s, are designed to inspire young men with feelings of patriotism and invincibility.

Growing up in the post nuclear age, I was curious whether the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima was one of those momentous events where people remember exactly where they were and what they were doing. Don said that for him, that was not the case. “It is D-Day that I will never forget,” he said with an emotion that was simultaneously deep and private.

The war, however, did bring a prairie boy and an Island girl together.Vicky was born in Victoria, and during the war she and her friends frequented Robert House. “That’s where we first met. It was a place where girls went to dance with the sailors. I loved the way the bellbottoms of the uniforms twirled around as we danced. Don and I were married in 1945.”

One of the shortages faced by civilians during those years brought a twinkle to her eye. “There was no elastic, so we had buttons on our underwear. We were running to catch the midnight boat to Vancouver for our honeymoon, and my sister’s undies gave way. She just stepped out of them and kept running with us!”

After the war, Don and Vicky remained on the coast. “I got a job the very next day with the Department of Fisheries. Anyone needing sailors would come into the Army and Navy Club and call out what they needed.” This was followed by working for the Department of Transport, and an improvement in wages from $65 to $90 a month.
“Since I had been on a minesweeper during the war they put me on a mine disposal ship. Ironically, our life insurance wasn’t valid when we were on mine disposal,” he shakes his head. “There was one Japanese mine that broke anchor and washed ashore on the beach up Campbell River way. It was alive, and we blew it with dynamite.” He remembers searching for another one during the night, only to find by the light of day that the ship’s passes had been dangerously close to the live mine.
“Remember the time we were out bicycling and they sent a car to find you? Not many people had phones then,” Vicky explained. “My mom had one on her wall, the crank kind,” she demonstrated with her hand, laughing, “and she always made you pay the five cents up front for the phone call.”

The Lloys had four children between 1948 and 1953, and there was the constant motivation to improve one’s circumstances. “Wherever I lived, it never bothered me, as long as I had a job,” says Don. “You live where you can work.”

Don apprenticed as a pipefitter, and spent years in the pulp mills, first in Prince Rupert and then as millwright foreman in Alberta. A cancer scare led him and his family to the tall grasses and open skies of Manitoba, a homecoming of sorts for Don. “We headed for the great unknown of the Prairies,” is how Vicky describes it, “and that speaks volumes. We shipped everything by box car, half of it full of horses and the other half a one-ton truck with all our belongings.”

“Manitoba was good to us,” Don continues. “We started with 160 acres and wound up with over 2,000. I still remember the first cow I bought from my dad.”
“It was a family affair,” Jan, their youngest daughter, reminisces. “The horses, the ranches, the cattle drives every spring and fall, it was great growing up.” The children were raised sandwiched between the dual philosophies of “don’t sweat the big stuff” and “the small stuff is always stupid.”

Retirement brought Don and Vicky back to the Island, where they have been for the last twenty-eight years. The strong sense of family remains steady. Vicky jokes about her twenty-one year old grandson “having to bend himself in half to give me a hug. Or maybe I should stand on a bench, ‘cause grandma is way down here.”

Thinking about their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Don muses, “I wonder if they realize how much mom and I appreciate the time they spend with us.” ~

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