My Great-Grandfather

[David Dunlop]

Hi Alex and welcome to MLU.

If I understand the process at all, troop movements in and out of Canada during the war and well into the late 1940’s, was a contract/charter type of arrangement with the various owners of the liners that were all converted. The records are hard to find and I suspect are still locked away somewhere. Odds are that the outbound trip you are looking for was via Halifax.

For the return trip, you might get lucky if you have access to Ancestry on-line.

A surprising number of Canadian troops returned home on troop ships into major ports along the eastern Seaboard of the United States and then boarded trains north to Canada. As such, these troops had to fill out standard US Immigration paperwork and a steady flow of this documentation is now digitized and showing up in the Immigration records from the 1940’s in the USA.

No guarantees, but you might get a hit.

Good luck with the investigation.

David

[Colin Alford]

Alex,

The files regarding Canada-UK troopships can be found in the Library and Archives Canada "Directorate of Movements" files.

Using your presumed Embarkation date of 13 or 14 Sept 1943, I used this search
https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/collec...perator_2=AND&

to determine that the likely candidate is the Queen Elizabeth:

https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Collec...61785072371167

Unfortunately the microfilm that contains this file (C-5691) is not available on-line. If you know someone in Ottawa with access to LAC, they can use the information in the above link to organize viewing the appropriate microfilm.

I did manage to find the file for the Westbound voyage of the Queen Elizabeth which arrived in Halifax on 3 Sep 1943. Please have a look through this file for the type of information that you can likely expect. (I did notice a document related to a group of gunners who were to guard the ship during it's stay in Halifax, and then depart with the ship):
https://heritage.canadiana.ca/view/o...9/4985?r=0&s=2

I am not familiar any resources that can help with your search for the UK-France voyage.


Regards,
Colin

[John P]

Welcome to MLU.Good luck with your search

[Colin Alford]

Alex,

I found this document:https://heritage.canadiana.ca/view/o...9/5194?r=0&s=4

While this programme is dated 3 Jun 43, and there must have been some subsequent changes (ie: QE arrived in Halifax on 3 Sep vice New York on 4 Sep), I believe that it shows the likely Port of Disembarkation for your Great- Grandfather was Clyde.

[Colin Alford]

Alex,

See this link for files related to the correct voyage of the “QE”

https://heritage.canadiana.ca/view/o...623/22?r=0&s=1

Files start at image 22.

Have a look at “Voyage Report” at image 330 for dates which match the known dates for your Great-grandfather.

I got to image 551 but still haven’t found a nominal roll that lists all 15000 passengers.

There are documents which give quantities of RCA pers transiting through Windsor, NS but no names.

I’ll continue to have a look later.

[Alex Adkins-Langen]

Hi Colin! Sorry I didn't see your comments until now! Thank you so much this is so incredibly helpful to me! If I'm understanding correctly, he would have disembarked in Scotland, before presumably moving down to England?