Fonds F0549 - Lennox family fonds

The Lennox family has Northern Irish roots in Simcoe County, Ontario. William James Wilfred (“Wiff”) Lennox (1883-1968) and his wife Fannie Jane Evangeline Watt (1895-1980) both shared a common ancestor, John Lennox (m. Mary Hinds) of Kilrae, Londonderry. John and Mary had been born sometime in the second half of the 18th century. Among their many children, they had two sons: John (1794-1866) and William (1800-1880). Fannie was John’s great-granddaughter and Wilfred was William’s grandson.

Wilfred (“Wiff”) grew up on his father James’ farm in Newton Robinson, Ontario. Wilfred was educated locally and later obtained his Bachelor of Scientific Agriculture degree in 1905 from the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph, Ontario. Fannie was the daughter of Arven Cruickshanks Watt, the incumbent priest of Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Bond Head Ontario. After her father’s death in 1912, Fannie and her family moved to Toronto where she attended Oakwood Collegiate and the Toronto Normal School. She may have taught for a year or two before her marriage in 1916 to Wilfred. She was a full-time homemaker from that time. Wilfred found employment with the Federal Department of Agriculture in the Plant Products Division where he worked until his retirement in 1948. During WWII, he was seconded to the Wartime Prices and Trades Board in Ottawa where he lived during the week.

Fannie and Wiff had three children: William (“Bill”) James Arven (1917-1991); John Watt (1920-1943); and Elizabeth Jane (“Bettie”) (1921-2010). The family’s home was at 9 Duggan Avenue in Toronto. The children attended Brown Public School and North Toronto Collegiate Institute. John was employed during the summers of 1939 and 1940 as a bell boy and later a deck hand on the Great Lakes passenger steamship “Manitoba.” In September 1939 he enrolled, like his father before him, at the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph. His roommate there was Richard Palmer. During his second year at O.A.C., John met Muriel (“Meem”) Young who had enrolled at the Guelph college for women, the Macdonald Institute, popularly known as Macdonald College. She and John became close and he carried her photograph with him overseas when he later joined the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. John was a member of the Canadian Officers Training Corps on campus and in spring 1941, after the completion of his final second-year examinations, he travelled to the Manning Pool in Hamilton , Ontario and applied and enlisted in the R.C.A.F. His older brother Bill also joined the R.C.A.F after his marriage in June 1942.

John was a steady letter-writer and kept up a steady correspondence with family, particularly his mother who for the most part appears to have been intended to share her letters from John with the rest of the family. These letters comprise most , though not all, of John’s letters in the fonds. Others – those written to and from Meem Young, and to and from Richard Palmer who was later killed in Burma – have been lost. This flow of communication continued constantly during the war throughout John’s training in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan at bases in Sydney, Nova Scotia; Victoriaville, Québec; Cap-de-la-Madeleine, Québec; and finally in Moncton, New Brunswick where John received his wings as sergeant pilot. He came home for disembarkation leave just after Christmas 1941 and stayed until just after New Year’s. By early 1942 he was posted to Debert, Nova Scotia and was shipped to the United Kingdom in February. John completed his training in October 1942, but was required to retrain in order to fly what was to him a new kind of aircraft nicknamed “heavies” – enormous Halifax and Wellington bombers. In January 1943 he received his commission as a pilot officer from the King and was thrilled to have received it in the United Kingdom. He was eventually assigned to the 405 Pathfinder Squadron which was designed to illuminate German targets in advance of a bomber assault. He flew a number of missions into Germany as crew member and then in April he assumed, as Pilot Officer, command of his own aircraft and six-member Commonwealth crew.

On the night of May 4/5 on a mission to prepare the way for the bombers on a night raid targeting Dortmund in the Ruhr Valley, Lennox and his crew were fatally disabled over Lingen-am-Ems by a German fighter fire just as they crossed the Dutch-German border. Lennox maintained control of the descending Halifax bomber long enough for five of the crew members to escape by parachute. Those five survived. Lennox and his air gunner Bernard Moody were killed. John Lennox was one month short of his twenty-third birthday. He and his air gunner were initially buried in Lingen-am-Ems. After the end of the war, their bodies were moved to the Reichswald Forest British Military (now Commonwealth) Cemetery near Kleve, Germany, just over the border from Nijmegen, the Netherlands.