YouTube Interview
With Lucy (Hennessy) Jarratt, Patrick's Daughter
May 31, 2009, Bathurst, NB, Canada
In this seven minute YouTube video, Lucy Jarratt of Bathurst recalls her father joining up with the Canadian Forestry Corps in 1940 when he was 56 years old. Now almost 92 years old, Lucy remembers that in the spring of 1940 her father came back from the logging camps where he worked 65 miles up river from Bathurst and he wasn't happy because all the men who he had worked with for so many years had left to join the Forestry Corps.
Patrick saw an ad in the local newspaper looking for "cooks" and even though he was 56 years old, he lied about his age and joined the Army, taking basic training at Valcartier Camp that December in Quebec. By April, he was on his way to Scotland where he lived and worked in Beauly, in the Scottish Highlands, for five years.
He made many lasting frienships in Beauly and, like many Canadians who served in the Highlands, Patrick never forgot the kindnesses of the Scottish people who became such an important part of his life during the war years. In fact, the correspondence between these war time friends continued until the eldest Frasers passed away in 1967. Patrick died in 1970 at age 86. The bulk of his letters were found in the attic of the old Hennessy family home nearly 40 years later, in the summer of 2008.