Feature Article May 27, 2004
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Meet Your Neighbours Vern Sherbino
"Life moves in circles Ive always come back round to 
where I started." Vern Sherbinos smile lights up his face as he looks out over Mitchell Creek, remembering how he and his father fished the area lakes when he was a child. "Thirteen Island, Knowlton, Sydenham, Loughborough," he recites; "What kind of fish? All kinds - pike, bass, salmon, some days just sunfish and crappies." Occasionally they would rent a boat by the bridge in Sydenham: he reminds me that in those days, he got lots of practise rowing around the lake, for small boat motors were rare.
Vern was 25, a fully-trained stonemason, and recently married to his high school sweetheart when he joined the army in the fall of 1939, and headed off to war. He shipped out of Halifax for Britain on the Queen Elizabeth. One of the fastest ships of the time, the luxury liner turned troopship soon outran her escort, and made a zig-zag course across the North Atlantic, landing in Scotland seven days later. From then until the end of the war in Europe six years later, Vern travelled with the Royal Canadian Army Services Corps from England to Italy, where he spent much of the war, then eventually up through France to Holland. There he was offered the choice of staying in Europe with the occupying forces, or volunteering for service in the Pacific. Longing to return to Canada, he signed up for the Pacific. Fortunately, shortly after he arrived home, the war ended.
During the 50's, Vern and his family spent six years in Churchill, Manitoba. He tells of snow drifted to the rooftops, polar bears in the street, and cold so sharp that diesel engines wouldnt start. He shows me a picture of the skinny treeline evergreen he and his son brought home one Christmas.
Not long after returning to Kingston, Vern was posted to the opposite extreme of temperature he spent six months in Egypt with the UN. Always, though, he returned to Kingston.
He remembers walking as a child from Maitland Street out to Portsmouth village when it really was still a village, with its own mayor. One of his favourite stories concerned his early working days in Kingston. He was part of a construction crew at the Hotel Dieu, where they were asked to coat a ceiling with a textured concrete mix, rather than plaster. A couple of weeks later, they were called back to the job - the ceiling appeared to be sprouting a thick crop of grass! It turned out that the concrete had been shipped in sacks that had been previously used for oats, and enough grain had remained in the bags to provide an unusual ceiling effect.
Now, Vern is living at Snug Harbour with his son and daughter-in-law. He likes being near the lakes where he used to fish. When asked what the greatest surprise has been in his life, looking back over 92 years, he says, "Time! How quickly it passes!" Thanks to his curiosity, observational skills, excellent memory and sense of humour, Verns memories are vivid and immediate both for him and for his listener.
