June 7 1943

Dear Mother:

Here we are in Summerside—for a day. We are leaving this afternoon for Charlottetown or perhaps Montreal if we can’t find any excitement on this island. You see we have a weeks leave as there were too many to start the new course. This sort of thing happens every week and had we known we could have wired for an extension from Saskatoon.

We got here late Saturday night and having nothing to do on Sunday we walked into town—about four miles and looked the place over. Summerside has only about 4000 inhabitants so is not much of a place and when we get started on the course we won’t see much of it. We will be getting one day off a week and one 48 in the nine weeks. P. E. I. seems quite a pretty spot—very green with almost brick dust coloured soil.

We spent about 1½ days in Toronto and two in Montreal. In Toronto I had supper with an old varsity friend of mine and his wife. They drove me around part of the better residential section afterwards. Every house in the city is either brick or stone as frame buildings are not allowed.

We were much more impressed with Montreal. It was a very clear day when we arrived and we spent most of the first day on Mount Royal which is right in the centre of town. It has a marvellous view. The cafes are distinctive too. Most of them new and very modern with an imposing list of wines and liquors. Some of the buildings are very nice too such as McGill University, the art gallery and many churches.

They gave us a compartment on the train from Montreal to Moncton. This is the best way to travel by train and we had quite a party that night.

As most of the students here are officers we don’t get anything particular in accomodation. In fact our quarters in Saskatoon were perhaps a little better but now we don’t have to make our beds or worry about barrack inspections.

One chap I met this morning is someone who worked in one of the CM&S offices at Yellowknife when I was there. I last saw him at manning depot. He had just finished a weeks leave similar to what we are getting now. I hope we are going to find it worthwhile because we volunteered for it. We had thoughts of New York for awhile but this seems rather difficult to do.

With love from
Tony.

[Note: Transcriptions provided by collection donor.]