100-year-old New Brunswick veteran honoured for life of service

When Angus Hamilton returned home from the Second World War, there was no celebration or recognition of the sacrifice.

But on Wednesday, that changed.

“So, Angus, today is for you,” Fredericton Golden Club past president Clifford Kennedy said at a ceremony honouring the veteran. It was both a celebration of his years of service between 1941 and 1945 and his 100th birthday.

Hamilton served in the Royal Canadian Air Force and said enlisting in the military was the “right thing to do.” He was deployed for operational service during the Burma campaign.

He survived the war and when he returned, he knew he wanted an education.

“The government was very kind,” he said. “They offered a month of post-secondary education for every month in the service.”

Hamilton has served 54 months and he would spend six years studying.

“They paid the tuition and they gave us, if we were single, $60 a month and if we were married, $90 a month, and that was enough to live on in those days.”

He then went on to join Canada’s National Mapping Organization as a surveyor, putting to work some of the many skills he’d learned during the war.

In 1971, after settling in Fredericton, he became the chair of the Surveying Engineering Department,  now known as the Department of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering, all the while making many contributions to his country and the lives of many young students, including Fredericton Mayor Kate Rogers’ partner.

“He is a huge fan,” she said of her husband, who graduated from the program in the ’80s. “I’ve heard your name so many times over the years. He has the utmost respect for you and all of your contributions to the profession of survey and land surveying, to the university, and young surveyors.”

She said Hamilton’s legacy is one to be remembered and appreciated.

“On behalf of Fredericton city council, on behalf of the residents of Fredericton, I wish to thank you for your service, for your devotion, for your dedication to the war effort,” she said. “We don’t take that for granted even 77 years later.”

Still, though, Hamilton never expected to be honoured in this way.

“I felt that I was representing the hundreds, thousands, who’ve not lived as long and never had something like this.”

Hamilton kept journals while he was overseas, things that helped inform his memoirs.

“Every 10 days, I’d reflect on what was interesting since the last entry. Sometimes there were quite a bit between entries. Sometimes I forgot things that were important but I got a lot of them down.”

He took the names of people he’d met in different countries, eventually visiting 33 of them.

“I had pretty good source material,” he said.

Another memoir is planned to be released with a final chapter entitled Wellness at 100.

But as for the secret to a long life?

“Well, there is no secret, just keep going.”

by Global News