Frank Smyth
The following is from Intergenerational Integrities 2021 Anthology. Intergenerational Integrities involves 18 like-minded, passionate secondary students of British Columbia and Alberta who share a common love for writing, history and learning. Their purpose is to connect youth and seniors, especially during the Covid-19 global pandemic, where many have been physically and socially isolated. For this initiative, each student has been paired with a veteran of the Korean War.
Frank Smyth is a Veteran of the Korean War, having also served in the Canadian Armed Forces until 1970. He also served in Egypt, Cyprus and Lebanon. He has been a member of the Royal Canadian Legion for 47 years and has been Coquitlam Branch 263's Parade Marshall for many years. He is a co-chair of the Coquitlam Poppy Fund and Parade Marshall for Burnaby BC. He is a co-chair of the Dogwood Veterans Group that sets up special displays at the Dogwood Pavilion in Coquitlam, where the public and school children visit and learn about the wartime experiences of Veterans. Mr. Smyth is also an active board member of the George Derby Centre. He has conducted special services for Remembrance Day, D Day, liberation of Holland, VE Day, Presentation of Frances Legion of Honour, and many other events. He is currently an active member of KVA Heritage unit no 69.
Sam Lloyd is a recent graduate of Strathmore High School in Strathmore, Alberta where he spent most of his time in the school’s theatre, preparing soundtracks, fixing equipment or just chatting with other theatre students. He also worked at the local movie theatre and working corporate audiovisual jobs in Calgary. He is also an amateur speaker designer and woodworker, spending most of his time at home in the garage running his table saw or listening to whatever project has been completed most recently. Sam currently resides in Red Deer, Alberta, where he continues to work creating music and various designs.
Frank Smyth
By Sam Lloyd
I asked the Canadian about his experience in the Korean War.
“I had never seen hunger, poverty, and devastation like that… You remember all the discomfort.”
The Canadian chuckled a bit while detailing the uncountable struggles he went through while in military service.
“To sum up… I guess it was worth it.”
Words have never been spoken to me in a way that made me prouder to be a Canadian than in that moment. The Canadian, the veteran who I was speaking to was a wonderful, inspiring man who joined the army two weeks after his seventeenth birthday and served in Korea while he was still a teenager. He embodies everything I believe a Canadian should strive to be; proud, positive, respectful and prepared to help anyone in need, no matter who they are or where they come from. In his words, he and his comrades didn’t even know where or what Korea was, and yet there they were, volunteering to go halfway across the globe to aid. Our country is known across the world as a selfless and kind one, and it is thanks to people like those involved in the Korean War. More than twenty-six thousand Canadians went to assist in Korea. I am proud of them.
I remember, in my relatively young life, being in elementary school in my small town and watching the Vancouver winter Olympics on a projector in the gym and feeling for the first time a real sense of pride in my country. In that moment, for the first time, the world felt bigger than I had known, much larger than my rural town of ten thousand, but it felt to me as if I could grow to match it.
It was inspiring that simple athletes would work so hard to represent our country on the world stage, take the chance, win or lose, to show their skills. I was amazed by how much larger than life it seemed then, how great it felt to share in simply being a Canadian next to my classmates, to strive for the kind of strength that would let us be great, together, as a class, as a school, a town, but most importantly, a nation.
Now, these memories, these intense, new emotions that I’d never felt before that I held in my heart when I was merely eight years of age, are overshadowed by one call with a man whom I’d never met before, then through the hours of research, reflecting on the stories of the courageous ones who were there. The warmth and light and hope that conversation and reading brought are unrivaled. I believe more people should be able to know, be able to share in this part of our history their pride in Canadians who volunteered, who helped those in countries they had only heard of in the newspapers maybe twice, who fought and died to help keep a people free. That sense of togetherness and a standard to strive for are invaluable to a nation like ours, that is changing and adapting to this modern world, leading the charge on many fronts, but still endeavoring to learn from our past mistakes and others’. In all of this, we stand proud and united, and stronger because of it. The sacrifice of those brave Canadians must not disappear from memory. The Korean War must be forgotten no more.